10 kits in and still tasting green

[The Goatreich]

Without knowing your processes its hard to say but a friend of mine when transfering to secondary was letting his beer drop about 2 feet as he only had a short pipe. I pointed out that he needed to get as little air in as possible so to get a longer pipe that reached the bottom of the secondary. Twang vanished.

This is exactly my situation!! I've just started drinking my first brew, and it has a tang. Still nice enough, but a tang. I have a stout conditioning, but I did the same siphon method. I didn't realise that it was that important and so that's a lesson learned.

Next time I'll raise the secondary slightly, or just buy a longer pipe.

 

[Buzzing]

Hi All,

I'm in-experienced, so don't mind me, but what I have found that helps my homebrew not to taste like the homebrew Mattybabsy is referring to is :

[a] Don't follow the kit instructions, don't just dilute it with hot water and chuck yeast. Put it in a big pot that can take your full run, or at least say 60% of your brew, boil it a bit, not too much, and stop boiling before it goes darker. Try and use mineral water, and a lil bit of hops won't hurt either.

Chill your hot wort rapidly, even if you only use cold water and ice, to force the cold break to settle out, and make sure NOT to add the cold break solids back into the brew.

[c] Use a yeast starter, pref, feeding on the same wort at the same temp as your planned pitching temp, then you ensure they hit the ground running and are not shocked. If you treat your yeasties well, they return the favour.

[d] Try and keep the fermenting temp as constant as possible. A small closet with lotsa towels works well.

[e] Don't be hasty, leave it for at least 2 weeks. Even if it's obvious that it's done fermenting. Those yeastys are still hard at work, even if it don't loook like it.

[f] (prolly be crucified for this one) try and give the secondary a skip. Leave it on the trub for a while, with a good yeast, 28 days at 14`C or about 21 days at 20`C should not have any negative impact. It seems as if the yeast cleans up alot of the bad tastes like this and also seems to reduce the bad hangovers I've had from others' homebrews dramatically.

Try these steps once and I am relatively sure you'll get rid of that homebrew tang, and end up with a product surpassing your expectations in quality. Yeah I know it's alota work and so on, but to me, it's well worth it and has only paid dividends for me. :drink:

 

[mattybabsy]

thx guys- My siphon is long enough to reach the bottom of the secondary for priming, so no issues there. only thing that has stood out is that I hadn't been leaving them in a cooler place a couple of wks after bottling- they had just been stored at room temp. so i've moved them all to a cooler location. i made my first extract last wk and even as it's fermenting, it tastes better than any kit so far!!

 

[mattybabsy]

finally got some details on my water

'Based on 2010 results, the ZS0102 - Dunore Ballygomartin South supply zone covering the above area had an average hardness of 66.67 mg/l calcium. This would be classed as moderately hard.'


they have a much more comprehensive breakdown in the email, what should I be looking for in it?

 

[philip5660]

if you're concerned about your water - why not try a batch using bottled water?
When I first started I wanted to make it as fool proof as possible so I bought 5x5l tesco ashbeck water.

then of course look at the other factors that you've probably already had loads of advice on, different yeasts, racking - maybe even a different sanitiser and more thorough rinsing (that's a bit of a long shot).

Other possibility is you're maybe just need to go all grain. I haven't done so myself as yet but hope to next year.