Lessons Learned

The Pub
1

I learned two important lessons tonight.

  1. If you are brewing a 3% ABV beer do not use any chocolate malt, my 2% for color contributed to flavor.
  2. Do not brew what SWMBO requests, family really doesn’t know what they want, IMHO

When you are told your beer taste like an ash tray it is a bit hard to take.

2

That looks like 3 lessons, sorry brother. I hear you on family requests. It seems every beer I make and like, SWMBO does not like and what I don’t like, she does. I’m quite glad she wanted me to make a saison(that she then did not like)…

3

If it is in a keg add a pound or two of Maltodextrin dissolved in water. It will boost the body and might just take the beer from zero to hero and salvage the batch.

4

Thanks, I will give a shot.

5

If you have an ashtray beer, next time mash at a higher pH (5.5 or 5.6), or cold steep the dark grains and add to the mash when you start the vorlauf.

6

Try dosing a glass with some baking soda to raise the pH a bit. If it helps you can dose it in the keg.

7

Thank you. I’ll give the baking soda a try as well.  I used the BruNwater spreadsheet to estimate and manage pH and minerials, Brown Malty profile with a little more sodium (40).  The taste is pretty subtle to me, I think my wife is really senistive to this chocolate malt.

8

Which chocolate malt did you use? Pale or regular? I find that the lighter roasted malts aren’t as smooth as the dark ones, but the darker roasted malts give you a bit more ashiness.

9

It was the regular chocolate (dark) malt.