So I finally pulled a sample of the low ABV pale ale I brewed a few weeks back using as much LODO religion as I could muster.
Tasting the beer, it has a sharpness or prickle on the tongue that I can only compare to a soda. I suppose it would compare closely with orange soda or maybe just the impression I get off seltzer water (which I find sharp and displeasing). I’m curious if this could be a symptom of too much SMB at the beginning of the process dropping the pH too much. The mash pH was right on (5.3) but I didn’t take a reading on the finished beer…maybe I should go do that.
I tried dropping a few grains of baking soda in there to pull the pH up a bit and that may have mitigated it a bit but it wasn’t gone.
Has anyone else had this experience? I’m curious if this brew might be more susceptible due to the low ABV/malt quantity that made up the beer to begin with (3.8% ABV). Aside from that, it tastes good.
I brewed a lodo American blonde, under 4% ABV, dryhopped. I did not have the sensation you describe. Never measured the pH of the final beer. And sulphur does not smell/taste like that I think.
It isn’t sulphur, I have dealt with that plenty of times in my lagers. There still a fair amount of yeast and particulates coming out (since it is the first pull after the thing was put in the fridge), so maybe it has to do with those bits. That will be apparent once it clears up in a few more pints.
Definitely not over carbonation, but low pH is where my gut is pointing. Since the SMB will lower the pH as it reacts, I was wondering if that could be the culprit. I used 4.5 camden tabs in 8.5gal on no-sparge strike water, so it didn’t seem like I was going excessive or anything.
Right, so that seems like a fairly modest change to me. Also, I thought that fermentation tended to want to end at a certain pH, rather than just be a certain shift (yeast dependent and all that). According to the test strips, the pH of the finished beer is maybe 4.4.
Hey Nate,
On a side note involving mash pH, I brewed an American Blonde earlier this summer that came in at a very low 5.08 mash pH (measured room temp). The resulting beer did not have that taste sensation you are describing, but maybe your pH was even lower than that?
I have picked this flavor up in some local “Golden Ales” that I have had in the last year or so. I thought it was odd when I had it in those, and I think it is odd in mine.
I get the feeling that it is a pH/mineral thing, even though the beer pH measures at normal levels and the mash pH was normal (4.4 might be a touch high for the finished beer but not unreasonable).
I think I might take some tasters of it and dose them each with various things and see if any of them do something notable (CaCl, gypsum, acid, baking soda, etc)
If your mash pH was reasonable, then your salts must’ve been somewhat reasonable as well. Even with the extra SMB addition for Lodo, that shouldn’t have thrown you off too much. I am curious now what you are picking up. Could it be, that the beer is just a bit green and could stand to mature a bit?
That is possible. I have it in the kegerator now, so I can pull samples day by day and see how it evolves. Patience is generally a good thing in this hobby.
I did a crude spund. I didn’t have the relief valve yet, so I just put it in there and let the pressure off a few times so it didn’t get too high. It ended up not being carbonated enough (maybe 1.8 volumes), so it will end up being a hybrid of the two. The flavor was there right in the first pull though, before adding any force carbonation.
Ok, so here is a question for those who are sparging:
I am batch sparging this next batch and I have used the yeast scavenging to remove the O2 from the strike/sparge water. I use a cooler as a holding tank for the sparge water while I do the mash, but that got me thinking about how to keep the oxygen levels down in that water without worrying about it since it was going to be sitting there for a while and would get churned around a little when it was moved to the tank and such.
My thinking was this: Heat the water up to 85F and then add the yeast/sugar. Then pump the sparge water (at 85F) up into the tank and let it sit there with the yeast doing its thing while the rest of the process it was occurring. Then just sparge with the cooler water that has the active yeast in it (brulosophy has done an experiment sparging with cool and hot water and found no difference, and I have found the same).
That way, the yeast is doing it’s thing up to the point where it hits the grain and heats up enough to kill the wee beasties. The same would seem to apply for fly sparging (which I also do).
I am by far NO expert at all, but it seems that it takes at least a couple hours for the yeast to scavenge the oxygen enough to reduce its levels to acceptable. During an hour long mash I don’t know if the yeast will drop the ppm enough to make it lodo.
I guess I left out that after I pumped the water into the holding tank, I left the whole thing for an hour and a half or so before starting the brew day. So, the sparge water had a total of 2.25 hours before it got infused into the grain.
Then you would probably be good. But why not heat the water, pump it up to your hot liquor tank for holding, then add your yeast/dextrose mix once all the water is done being “moved” around?
If I heat it to temp and then move it to the tank, it will kill the yeast instantly when it goes into the water (at 170F). That was the main motivation for not heating it. If I had a heater in my sparge water holding tank, then I could just treat it and then heat it just before sparging…but alas that is not the case.