I am noticing a Watery flavor or weakness to my beer.
Can this be conected to the ph level .
I ask that since I have not been checking it and am trying to find a reason or a fix.
Hey Hornet, Welcome to the forum!!
Can you please post an example of a recipe, process/procedure, gravity readings, yeast and fermentation temps & times of a brew you are tasting as watery? Maybe we can help narrow it down for you. Cheers!!!
If you pH is off it can make a beer fall flat on you palate. Speaking of flat, make your you carbonation is in the correct range. Different type of 'flat" but both can lead to watery tasting beer.
Take a pH reading of the finished beer at room temperature. It should be in the 4.1 to 4.5 range. Too high and it can taste dull. Too low and it can taste thin, and start tasting sour.
But, yeah, we need some more details to give you specific help. Do you have any local judges or experienced brewers that can help you identify the flavors? There are a lot of different things to try, but it would help if we can narrow it down first.
A light beer with a lot of forward flavor can leave a watery finish. I’ve experienced this with a light pale ale that I missed the OG by quite a bit and a Scottish 60. The pale ale aged into something very tasty as the hop flavor imbalance faded…I’m still waiting on the Scottish 60 for the same. Try giving it some time…
Really there’s little reason to attempt a diagnosis without a recipe and brewing info. Is it an ongoing problem or just your latest batch?
But maybe Gordon gave you all the info you need… ???
I’m curious - When taking the pH of a finished beer at room temperature, do you also wait for the beer to go flat? Or will the dissolved CO2 not make any difference?
I don’t do it, but I generally measure this before I carbonate the beer. So I don’t really know. I doubt it would make much of a difference.
I have a friend who frequently complains that beers are ‘watery’. He applies this to commerical beers as well as home-brew. What it seems he means by this is actually light-bodied, but has yet to develop his tasting skills and vocabulary.
You say ‘watery flavor or weakness’. I wonder if this isn’t an issue of the mouthfeel. More detail on the process (gravity readings, mash temps, etc) and recipe, as others have said will be needed to help narrow this down.
pH is almost definitely not your problem. If youre brewing with extract, pH is not a concern at all. Poor fermentation is the most likely cause of thin and lifeless beer in my experience. Try pitching more healthy yeast and ferment cool.
I tested some Fat Tire yesterday when I was calibrating a pH meter and it read 4.6 so that makes it seem like carbonation doesn’t affect the pH.