Off Flavor in Hoppy Homebrews

So the keg hops covered up most of... well most of everything. It’s not as bad as before. I upgrade this from quarantine last resort to... close to what some people charge money for. Cheers

 

So the next batch just finished up the other day.

I was not able to keep the temps under 64F; I did keep them 68F and below. I had the FV in a refrigerator set at at 60F and I kept bringing it down as the temp did not drop until I set the temp at 53F.

The temp finally came down on day 3 to 67 and kept dropping down to 63F on day 4. At this point fermentation basically stalled at ~ 1.021.

I then raised the temp up to 70F-73F using a heating wrap. FG came out at about 1.020. Not what I was expecting but oh well.

This batch was again very estery with notes of banana and bubble gum. Hops were muted once again.

I think that a lot of my hops are getting blown out of my airlock and or being covered by the esters being produced by S-04. The airlock smells amazing on days 1-2 and then like banana the rest of the way.

The next test batch I will ferment with US-05 and see the difference.

Also, of note: the offensive bitterness was absent in this batch as well. This reinforces the conclusion that I was getting too much hop/break in my FV.

I constructed a better way of WP’ing and bought a new pump that doesn’t break every time I use it. This allowed me to not have to tip my BK and leave the trub behind.

 

I have used liquid yeast in the past, in fact, I exclusively used liquid yeast in the past. I don’t know, I used dry yeast last year because of shipping temps and I just haven’t moved back to liquid yet. Actually, I am going to brew the All Together IPA soon and I have ordered liquid yeast for that.

I am kegging these. So, the last batch I threw in some keg hops and they covered everything up with a very pleasant aroma and taste. This batch I am letting them sit on some hops in a keg and then performing a closed transfer to another keg. The last batch, the keg hops started to get a bit too vegetal for my taste after a few days.

 

I just cold crashed the latest batch of this experiment and... it was oxidized. So no new data other than that I’m pissed about the wasted time/ingredients.

Not sure how oxygen got in there, I only opened it to dry hop. This was done at 1.015 with a final gravity of 1.011.

I rage purchased a floating dip tube and a new corny to try fermenting in the corny.

Since I started back up brewing again last year, after my 10 year hiatus, I have been using my SS Brewtech 7gal brew bucket. Every hoppy beer I have made, I have had an off-flavor in it that is hard to describe but completely mutes the intended flavor of the beer.

As frustrating as this is, I am going to press on in the name of... science? Zymurgy? Hopefully not meritless use of time and money!

Putting this aside, I did read an article about cold-short dryhopping and polyphenol content on Scott Janish’s website today(http://scottjanish.com/a-case-for-short-and-cool-dry-hopping/). I then remembered about the batch before last where I had foregone the drop hop until took the gravity reading and didn’t experience the off-flavor . So fermentation completed, I took gravity sample and noticed only esters from when fermentation peaked. I then cold crashed and took another sample and noticed nothing new. I then transferred to purged keg with keg-hops and carbed. After 2 days this beer tasted pretty damn good. Then the flavor started to change for the worse, but it wasn’t bad.

This affirms what Scott Janish is saying about short cold dry hopping.

For the next batch I will wait to dry hop until I cold crash And will transfer to serving keg after 2 days.

 

So, keeping this alive....

I haven’t haven’t had a lot of time to brew lately and a few weeks ago I was able to get one in.

I WANT to tell you that I thoroughly looked over my notes and planned out my brew day; made sure I didn’t waste my very precious brew day by repeating the same mistakes from before. I would love to tell you that, but I can’t...

In my excitement I did none of those things, except repeat the same mistakes. The brew day was not wasted though; I did change one thing: my fermenter. I fermented in a corny keg, partially under pressure.

I wanted to try fermenting in another vessel and I have wanted to ferment under pressure in the future so I bought some cornies a while back.

So, a few noticeable changes:

1. One of the weird indescribable off-flavors is gone. I’m attributing this to my old fermenter possibly having an infection. I would have loved to do a side by side comparison but I already cleaned the ball valve and put boiling water in the fermenter to kill any bugs.

2. The 2 remaining off-flavors are an extreme pithy bitterness and onion-garlic. I checked the recipe I was following which I scaled down from a 10 gal to a 3 gal batch. I started using Brewfather (I use Mac and the only other brewing app that worked from me was beersmith but Brewfather had an iPhone app) and I noticed that the recipe was over 100 IBUs. I don’t know why I didn’t look into this before but I didn’t so my bad. I’m attributing the pithy bitterness to this. I will adjust recipe to a more desired IBU range.

3. As for the onion-garlic: I haven’t read anything specific about the Apollo or Warrior hops, but I have read that depending on the harvest, a hop can contribute this flavor. I have used the Warrior and Apollo (not exclusively the recipe also has citra) hops in every one of these brews from the same 16 oz packages. I am going to remove these hops from the next recipe and see if that changes things.

I hope to brew again on the Thanksgiving weekend. I’ll keep all of those who are interested, posted.

 

The hop schedule for the majority of these brews (though I have played around with 30min boils for at least one of them) (3.5 gal batch):

60min: .33oz Warrior 18.1%AA
20min: .33oz Apollo 18.2%
15min: .5oz Citra (cryo) 22.2%
10min .33oz Apollo 18.2%

Hopstand (140F for 15min):
2oz Citra (cryo) 22.2%
1oz Apollo 18.2%.

Dry hop in keg (I do closed transfer from FV keg to SV keg onto hops):
2.5oz Citra (cryo) 22.2%
.75oz Apollo 18.2%

Buy the cryo citra in 1oz bags so I’m not sure if they are all the same each time but the Warrior and Apollo are from 16oz bags

 

I’ll have to try Brewcipher again, I thought that I tried it on the “Numbers” App on Mac and it didn’t work for me but I could be wrong; I def tried Bru’n water and it did not like Mac.

 

That’s the thing, the hops smell good. That is why I can’t put my finger on the reason for the onion/garlic.

Good point on the WP temp, this was due to me not turning the water in my chiller off fast enough and the temps dropped too fast. I will control this better on the next brew and keep it at 180F.

Also I have some non-cryo citra that I will use on the next one as well; and keep the cryo to cold side.

Thank you for the input!

 

Ok I said I would figure this out and I still am. I haven’t been able to brew a lot lately because of family commitments. And I’ve been lazy about posting. Lastly, I got Covid which left my sensory analysis of anything worthless. But I’m back.

So since the last brew, I brewed up some beers to experiment with the previously mentioned variables.

What I (think) I found out is:

1. I did an all Apollo beer. Apollo (18.2%) makes for a bitter beer but not an onion garlicky flavor.

2. I did another IPA (no Apollo): I kept estimated IBU’s below 50 and did a split batch between London Ale III and SO4. Firstly, it was not harshly bitter. I tried to keep temps under 68F but temps did reach 71F at peak fermentation. SO4 had a flavor that I was not fond of, whereas LAIII lacked that flavor. I’m guessing it was an ester from SO4 that I don’t particularly care for (sort of a dark fruit type flavor).

I need to brew some beers that I want to drink but I’ll try to get another experiment in in the next couple of weeks.