Second Brew a Disappointment

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Zappa86

Zappa86

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Just cracked open the first bottle of my second batch and I'm pretty underwhelmed by it. Its practically an identical recipe to the first batch, here is the recipes

3kg Coopers wheat LME
250g Carawheat
20g Hallertau @ 4.7%
WLP300 yeast
1/2 Whirfloc tablet

Batch 2
3kg Coopers LME
500g Muntons wheat DME
250g carawheat
22g Hallertau @ 4.7%
Servomyces nutrient
Washed WLP300 yeast (no starter but only taken from the fermenter the day before)

The first batch tasted almost like a shop bought Hefe with maybe not just so clean a finish. Batch two is quite sharp tasting, not vinegar but not smooth, not great head retention, bit more fruity (not too much), big sediment chunks (first batch had very little sediment other than the haze a Hefe should have) and seems quite thin mouthful.
The beer is very young but it's not a patch on the first batch at the same point and Hefe should be drunk young. Both were fermented for 2 weeks, batch 1 at 17.5C and batch 2 at 18.5C. Bother were tried after 12 days carbonation in the bottle, batch 1 at 2.5 volumes and batch 2 at 3 volumes.
Anyone see a big flaw in what I've done? The beer is still drinkable but definitely not as pleasant as the first batch.
 
First image batch 1
Second image batch 2

DSC_0423.jpg


DSC_0427.jpg
 
The second one looks like it has quite a bit of sediment in it, if its fairly highly carbed and has a lot of sediment when opened it can throw up a fair bit of sediment of the bottle bottom which can at times be quite strongly off tasting. Try pouring one without disturbing the sediment to see if you have a noticeable difference.
 
chewie said:
The second one looks like it has quite a bit of sediment in it, if its fairly highly carbed and has a lot of sediment when opened it can throw up a fair bit of sediment of the bottle bottom which can at times be quite strongly off tasting. Try pouring one without disturbing the sediment to see if you have a noticeable difference.
Click to expand...
Sounds a good shout. Annoyed at how this is compared to that other batch.

Sent from my D6603 using Tapatalk
 
First of all, I know nothing about this style - I have no plans to do a wheat beer, as such.

However, it is a vague possibility that re-using yeast by bottom cropping the residue from a batch of beer is going to give you progressively less flocculant yeast. I do this with US 05 (in particular) and there is a marked difference in how well the yeast settles out post fermentation between mother, daughter & grand-daughter generations.

If this were to be the case, a second batch might have benefited from an extra week in the primary FV, or from a week in a secondary FV?

Any more suggestions from actual brewers in this style, please?
 
I know nothing of the style, but do you know how much yeast you pitched? How many billion cells?

To me it looks as though you've taken the OG up, swapped out the wheat LME for Cooper's LME and raised the temperature.

So, four potential issues;

•Underpitching yeast - Fruity flavours are indicative of this. You've potentially pitched less yeast or unhealthy yeast in a slightly higher gravity wort. This will give you a prolonged growth phase, in which yeast produce all sorts of flavours.

•Your base malt is different - A wheat base will usually give you cleaner more delicate flavours than standard malt extract.

•Hops - You've upped the OG, so your hop utilisation won't be quite the same. Again possibly changing your flavour profile. Though I can see that you upped them by 2g

• Slightly higher fermentation temperature - Again leading to more fruity esters, this time by encouraging rapid growth. Combine this with a low cell count and your stressing the yeast.
Granted you only went up by 1°C, but it would probably still add to the fruity esters.

I've not run any of this through a calculator, just some assumptions based on the information in your first post.

Hopefully this may help.
 
Sorry I didn't type the second recipe out correct, both recipes are coopers wheat lme. I think you're right about the hop utilisation, when I brew this again do you think boiling the hops just in the wort from the steeped grains for 45 mins then do a late addition with the extract at 15 mins to go will help? Definitely underpitched, I'll go with 1l starter next time. Thanks all for the advice, think it has been a combination of a few things that have maybe not ruined but definitely negatively affected the brew.
 
Hi
Zappa86 said:
Sorry I didn't type the second recipe out correct, both recipes are coopers wheat lme. I think you're right about the hop utilisation, when I brew this again do you think boiling the hops just in the wort from the steeped grains for 45 mins then do a late addition with the extrac at 15 mins to go will help?Definitely underpitched, I'll go with 1l starter next time. Thanks all for the advice, think it has been a combination of a few things that have maybe not ruined but definitely negatively affected the brew.
Click to expand...

Hop bittering is a little awkward to predict as it is. I tend to use the Tinseth method, in which the utilisation figures are based on pre-boil gravity and boil time, I make all grain though and I'm not entirely familiar with extract methods.

It's really going to depend on your boil volume and boil gravity. Some extract brewers will boil a larger volume and evaporate to their final volume, others may boil a smaller volume and then top up to the fermenter volume.

I think brewers friend has a calculator that includes boil volume and final batch size.
 

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