I am currently 5 batches in on my all grain brewing. I have done the Scotish Heavy Recipe on here Brown Eyed Women, I have done 2 cream ales, a double IPA and an American Wheat. All (except the double IPA, which I am putting up to the high IBU’s) have an annoying grainy characteristic to the which I have no clue where it is coming from. I batch sparge, keep mash temp between 148-154 depending on style. I am to new to this to really mess with water chemistry. Any suggestions as to what can be causing this. I can only place the flavor as a biscuit/bread type flavor (not yeasty). Any suggestions would be great.
Mashing too hot, sparging too hot, or too long, boiling grain, and maybe over-crushed grains could be a culprit. I’m not sure about this, but I seem to recall that if you use pilsner malt and don’t mash long enough, or boil long enough, that can also cause grainy off-flavors. Can you tell us about your malts and mashing steps?
My money is on high pH if you’re not doing anything to adjust your water. All the beers you have listed are pretty pale in color, so you run the risk of hitting a pH that is high enough to cause issues.
If you don’t have an analysis of your tap water handy, then brew one batch with RO water, using BrunWater or Kai’s online mash chemistry calculator (http://www.brewersfriend.com/mash-chemistry-and-brewing-water-calculator/)to make sure your mash pH is in the 5.3-5.3 range. If that solves your problem then you know it’s your water.
Could you get this grainy flavor from under-conversion of the grains?
My last doppelbock came in WAY low (partial mash, not all grain) and tastes very malty/grainy. Not malty in the way that I would like it to, so perhaps grainy is the better descriptor.
I have noticed a grainy character to several beers I have brewed. Mostly with pils malt but I suspect it’s just a green beer thing. After a couple days in the keg chilling out and settling most of the grainy flavour is gone.
This is assuming what you are tasting is like chewing on a piece of malt. If you are talking about grainy astringency that dries out your tongue that’s when to look at your sparge temp and/or pH.
I wonder if you’re just not used to drinking good beer yet. After brewing with extract for many years, I remember how blown away I was about the good grainy character imparted from my first all-grain beer. It was awesome. Might be as simple as that!
Otherwise I would blame 6-row malt if you have been using that at all, or a possible pH problem, or you could be picking up asringency if you do not vorlauf well enough and boil too many chunks of unstrained grain material. You might want to look into vorlauf or recirculation to ensure you are doing everything by the book there. It’s happened to me early on in my all-grain experience.
Normally, I would also say use a good calculator like Bru’n Water. But that requires knowledge of the water supply quality. For a new brewer, that might be asking a lot. However, now that this brewer has several batches under the belt and they are consistently failing expectations, its time to start looking at water as a potential problem. This brewer does need to start researching the local water or send a sample in for testing. It will be money well spent.
With good data on the water, Bru’n Water will help decipher if the water is a problem.
Sorry for the delayed response guys. Have been away. Anyways, I think I “MAY” have figured out my problem. I have been using the wrong equipment profile on Beersmith and ending up with an extra gallon and a half of water in my wort. So I am assuming this could mean that I am oversparging and well and having poor efficiency?