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TWO BAD BATCHES

BILLY BREW

BILLY BREW

Grandmaster Brewer
Joined
Dec 25, 2006
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CHICAGOLAND AREA
Phenols have struck my sanctum...Lost a Bohemian Ginger Pils and a Dorty. OH THE HUMANITY!
Odd thin is that I brewed 2 batches between them without incident using t6he same equipment and grains.
I attached the recipes, anything you all can see that is an obvious problem?
 

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  • DADDYS DORTY.bsmx
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billybrew, if you have Phenols and you are using the same equipment and grains, what about your Sprague water ph, it has to be low (-5.4) to inhibit extraction. and do not over Sprague. also  different yeasts can have an impact on  Phenols flavors.
Those are my two ideas on what could of happened.
 
PH was 5.1 & 5.0 respectivly. I have been doing a combination BIAB and lauter. Thought it would make it easier to drain the grains, could that be doing it? I sparge with 1 gallon of water and recirculate only 2 gallons. This is frustrating!
 
tell me more about your process, what do you mean,"Thought it would make it easier to drain the grains, could that be doing it?",?? and what grains are you using. I can't access your link. sorry.
 
Hi Billy;

Phenols are perhaps the widest range of issues with beer falling into both pleasant and unpleasant categories. There are also a host of other unpleasant flavors that may not be phenols per se, but might've been described to you that way. So, I'd like you to describe the flavor(s) that are showing up.

In an earlier thread you described a phenol from having a covered boil, which was more likely DMS; a sulfur. So, I'm not trying to get bogged down in what is or isn't a phenol. I just want to address the off flavors and their possible sources.

I had horrible phenol issues in my first three beers, cause by chlorine. The beers tasted like Listerine. Not from my water, but over using bleach as a sanitizer because of my wide-eyed paranoia of infection and witless misunderstanding about how to brew.
 
Bog away sir,
The Bohemian never made it to the bottle. It smelled "off" and after putting it into a tritiery to try to clear it, it never did and had a cloudy yellow hue to it (reminded me of an infection of another kind:) ) Sort of had a sewer smell to it.

The dortmunder tastes like canned corn. It is sort of buttery on the tounge.
Regarding the "covered boil" this was a suggestion from people at my homebrewers club. And they were right in that I was doing a covered boil, so I just took their word for it.

Any help or ideas would be welcome
 
All Grain, Being the lazy SOB that I am, I use a bag to steep my grains in, in my GOTT, which also has a braided hose filter. I started to do this when the braided hose would slow down to a trickle, and I thought using a BIAB process would enable me to get more of the wort out without disturbing the bed...Seems to work well, but I am grabbing at straws here to see what is going on.
Regarding grains, all Northern Brewer that I crack myself with my handy dandy grain mill.
Base is 2 row barley and the rest are additive grains such as smoked, Dinginess, Cara etc. Nothing fancy and nothing gummy.
Then I boil the ginger in a separate pot for 10 minutes in 2 gallons of water and add it to the wort in the last 5 minutes with my aroma hops.
 
Ok what I'm not getting here is that you are brewing all grain or parcel mash? either way I agree with brewfun that there are so many off flavors in brewing it will be hard to pin down exactly what you have, but my instincts are that you have more than one problem. most things in life are a combination of things that add up to a problem. 
for now all I can suggest is that you boil hard,boil long. make sure that you have a good rolling boil for at least 60 min or more. do not add anything to the boil towards the end that has not boiled for at least 15 min and cool your wert down fast, get it into the clean fermenter and pitch with lots of healthy yeast. try to get the yeast off to a fast start. this should rule out infections. as for other types of off flavors, one thing is to not use chlorinated water, and do use Camden tablets.
  Other tips. I used to check the grav a lot, now I just let it go in the fermenter till its done. a lot of the time I only open the fermenter 2 times, 1 to check the grav and 1 to transfer to bottling bucket.
  hang in there, we will figure it out one way or another.       
 
Quick question.  How are you keeping the braid from collapsing?
 
I'm hearing:
1) Powdery Yeast
2) Sulfury
3) Buttery
4) Cooked Corn
5) Several rackings
6) Affects lighter beer styles (lagers) that need more aging.

Is the beer over attenuating? Are you getting gusher bottles?

As a first thought, I'm going with both wild yeast and bacterial sources. Bacterial sources take some time to bloom, but wild yeast can show itself during fermentation.

Banish all animals from the brewery! Dogs are a great source of Zymomonas and wild yeasts.

Change out all of your hoses and racking canes. Get new buckets if you use them for fermentation or bottling. 

Use StarSan or another acid based sanitizer as recommended. DON'T OVERUSE SANITIZER!!! The kill power comes from organisms taking up the acidic water and dying. Use too much and some spoilage organisms can spore up and stay in stasis until more favorable conditions exist.
 
Sorry, All Grain...The beginning of my post was the answer to your partial or all grain, I think you took it as a salutation...I brew All Grain, All Grain. ;D
 
ya the name "all grain" came from the fact that after my first brew was a p-mash I went right to brewing all grain only. so I though it would make a good handle. lol lol.
 
Wish I had followed that course. I did partials for 12 years before I saw the light. Fun as it was, it is SOOOOO much more fun now!
 
Don't suppose you're using a plate chiller are you? I had something stuck in their that made several batches go bad until I changed to an immersion coil - when I broke into the plate to have a look it had a corner on one plate that had mould, eventhou I had soaked in PBW for 30 mins each brew and then star san!
 
TurnDevil said:
Don't suppose you're using a plate chiller are you? I had something stuck in their that made several batches go bad until I changed to an immersion coil - when I broke into the plate to have a look it had a corner on one plate that had mould, eventhou I had soaked in PBW for 30 mins each brew and then star san!
Click to expand...
wow those plate chillers sound like a nightmare.
 
BILLY BREW said:
Wish I had followed that course. I did partials for 12 years before I saw the light. Fun as it was, it is SOOOOO much more fun now!
Click to expand...
So billybrew, ever figure out what was going on with your off flavors ?
 
all grain said:
TurnDevil said:
I broke into the plate to have a look it had a corner on one plate that had mould, eventhou I had soaked in PBW for 30 mins each brew and then star san!
Click to expand...
wow those plate chillers sound like a nightmare.
Click to expand...

Plate chillers are advanced, but hardly a nightmare. Improper use of any gear can be a nightmare.

While it isn't stated whether or not he had a pump, plate chillers are less effective and harder to clean without one. Plus, PBW is far more effective when hot (up to 160F).
 
I gave up with my plate as couldn't get the thing clean even when back washing off the mains water. Opened it up just to see before I binned it - bloody hell Im not touching any beer brewed with one!
 
TurnDevil said:
I gave up with my plate as couldn't get the thing clean even when back washing off the mains water. Opened it up just to see before I binned it - bloody hell Im not touching any beer brewed with one!
Click to expand...

I guess that means you're not drinking any commercial beer?
 
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