All my AG brews are pants...

yeastinfection said:

welcome to my world...
all though ive not been as impatient as you,Most my ag beers have been ****e,
fv min 2weeks, then 2 weeks warm 2 weeks cool.
i have about 120 bottle of undrinkable beer :-(
so ive just gone back to basics .. done a couple of Smash just to try and work out why its ****e,
im none the wiser but im slogging on and praying i suss it out,
be patient and as the others say 2+2+2 :grin:

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I have done the odd batch which was .. "meh" but thats typically down to me throwing together a recipe with bits and pieces and it not quite gelling.

If you have 120 bottlesw which are undrinkable then I wonder if they are all connected.. literally, were these one after the other?? do they all share the same bad flavour / off taste?

Could it be a wild yeast thats drying them out and had contaminated your equipment?
What sanitiser do you use?

Did the SMASH have the same fate??

_jon_ said:

It was a perfect brew.

Got 1.048 at 23 litres. Looks and smells great. Absolutely bang on. It’s fermenting as we speak :-)


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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Nice!!

You know it is all experience and whilst we are all learning, the more you do the better you get at things and you I dunno learn to deal with situations and adjust ect.

When I started AG you'd get something crop up or something would make me go into a bit of a panic ect ect or efficiency was all over the place.. nower days brew days just all seem to go to plan.... erm... *TOUCHES WOOD*.

You'll get there!! and hopefulluy this will be the one!!:thumb:

Too true. I know I'm a big time newbie, but heck I scorched the wort making the wheat beer.... Forgot not to use the temp control and heating element whilst mashing wheat malt as it's mega prone to scorching... I knew it happened, and knew it was a no no, but did it anyway. I now have to clean scorched wort off my ACE before I can use it again (it causes the boiler to trip out during peak boil...).

The beer is still coming out really delicious though. :twisted:

AdeDunn said:

Too true. I know I'm a big time newbie, but heck I scorched the wort making the wheat beer.... Forgot not to use the temp control and heating element whilst mashing wheat malt as it's mega prone to scorching... I knew it happened, and knew it was a no no, but did it anyway. I now have to clean scorched wort off my ACE before I can use it again (it causes the boiler to trip out during peak boil...).

The beer is still coming out really delicious though. :twisted:

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Snap. Did exactly the same thing with my AG hefeweizen. It really wound me up as I could taste it in the background of an otherwise perfectly good beer.

AdeDunn said:

Too true. I know I'm a big time newbie, but heck I scorched the wort making the wheat beer.... Forgot not to use the temp control and heating element whilst mashing wheat malt as it's mega prone to scorching... I knew it happened, and knew it was a no no, but did it anyway. I now have to clean scorched wort off my ACE before I can use it again (it causes the boiler to trip out during peak boil...).

The beer is still coming out really delicious though. :twisted:

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Snap again, also with a hefeweizen though my brew was ruined, tasted like ash. In 60 odd batches that's the only one that's been dumped.

Another snap for that one.
It was my first step mash and apparently at lower temperatures the flour from the wheat makes a very sticky mess and adheres to the element.
My wort smelt and tasted burnt so it ended up down the drain even before the boil.
I did another one without step mash, put the grain in a bucket, shook and put the larger grains first into the mash tube. I did not dough in too much at first, added plenty of rice hulls and kept the floury grains till last.

Uh oh I'm doing my first brew with a major wheat component tomorrow (72%) and you four have got me even more paranoid than usual. You're all talking about heating while mashing, right? I'm doing a single infusion BIAB with no heat applied during the mash so I shouldn't get this problem?

foxbat said:

Uh oh I'm doing my first brew with a major wheat component tomorrow (72%) and you four have got me even more paranoid than usual. You're all talking about heating while mashing, right? I'm doing a single infusion BIAB with no heat applied during the mash so I shouldn't get this problem?

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I didn't step mash mine, it scorched during the boil, I think too much malt flour and/or protiens escaped through the bottom of the BIAB bag somehow.

foxbat said:

Uh oh I'm doing my first brew with a major wheat component tomorrow (72%) and you four have got me even more paranoid than usual. You're all talking about heating while mashing, right? I'm doing a single infusion BIAB with no heat applied during the mash so I shouldn't get this problem?

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Nope. Mine was BIAB in a peco. I'd recommend stirring while you bring the wort to boil, keep some flow around the element to stop it gunking up and re-dissolve anything that does get stuck to it.

I think Saisonater and myself are probably the only ones who did it whilst mashing.

You'll be fine so long as any time there is a source of heat you keep the wort moving. I believe it's fine once you have the full rolling boil, as this is supposed to keep the wort moving.

The other thing I found doing a wheat beer was that even using only 1/4 of a protofloc tablet I got a LOT of trub (would tie in with what you were saying Steve, about proteins/flour escaping the bag), which blocked my false bottom AND bazooka filter pretty much instantly. I ended up transferring using my auto-siphon, so you may want to be prepared to do the same. :lol: The plus side of this is that I have very little trub in the FV compared to my previous BIABs where I transferred using the tap on the boiler. Which means I'll be able to get more beer into the bottles. :thumb:

Beginners luck though, can't taste the scorch in mine, hasn't even effected the colour, it's pretty nearly white.