Honey Brown tasted slight sour after taste after secondary

[snowman48360]

Got a Honey Brown kit for Christmas. LHBS suggested English Brown kit with two packages dry yeast and 5lb honey. Said don't use all honey. Found two recipes on line that suggested 1.5 lb honey with 3.3 lb amber LME, 2 lb Amber DME.

Added honey at flame out. Didn't use steeping bag for hops. Ran through filtered funnel to carboy. Had to scrape filter so I think a lot of hops got into fermenter.

OG 1.065.

Very large krausen in carboy. Blow off was into 4-5 inches of wter in two liter bottle of unsanitized water Lots of hops and sludge in bottom of bottle.
Racked to secondary after 1 week. Tasted great very smooth. Didn't check gravity.

Air lock water was not sanitized. No sign of pull back into carboy.

Checked secondary ferment today after 2 weeks. Gravity 1.011. Will check gravity again tommorrow. My concern is that taste was not as smooth. Slight sour after taste. My son described it as taste when wine starts to turn to vinegar.

My questions are:
- Normal?
- What went wrong? Sanitaton?
- Is gravity about right for bottling?
- Priming sugar or 1 cup honey for bottling to try to save after taste flavor.

[BDawg]

It's hard to say exactly what could have caused this. How sour is it? Try taking a glass of commercial beer of a similar style, and doctoring it with 3/4 teaspoon of malt vinegar. If that's the flavor your are getting in your beer, then yes, it's contaminated.

Take a couple bottles, and leave them at room temp (or even warmer, like 75 or 80F) by themselves for a minimum of about 3 or 4 weeks. Then, chill one down and open it. If it gushes and/or the sourness increases, then yes, infection. Try the other one after a couple of months.

It sounds like you might need to step up your sanitation regimen a notch. Make sure everything in your brewhouse gets a good soak in Star San, after it had been thoroughly cleaned with something like PBW. Always remember that on the cold side, nothing should ever come close to touching your beer unless it's been sanitized.

BTW, How old are your plastic parts like hoses, etc? They tend to capture and hold bacterial and wild yeast contaminents in the scratches. Even if you can't see them, the microbes could still be there.

Also, always use star san or vodka in your airlock or blowoff vessel, though I doubt that's what caused this.

I'd just use priming sugar. It's hard to predict how much carbonation you'll get from the honey. Besides, it won't add any flavor/aroma to speak of.

HTH-

[snowman48360]

Thanks! I'll get the malt vinegar and run a test.

[cosmo]

That description of the flavor matches what I experienced to a Tee. It's not an infection. I have been struggling with this for about a hundred batches or so. I have seen many others post with the same problem on various forums, but I have not seen a solution yet. Most just give up on extract and go all-grain. I am fairly confident that it is a deficiency of calcium for the yeast. Yeast require a minimum of 50 ppm of calcium. Calcium also contributes to yeast floculation. Is the beer hazy? Did you add any gypsum? If you boiled your extract in water that has even a moderate amout of carbonates, most of the calcium will precipatate as a thin layer of scale in the pot. This is especially true with partial boils where the extract is concentrated. My suggestion is to make the same recipe and add 1 teaspoon of gypsum. Also, save most of the extract to the end and add it at flameout. I recently went back and checked my notes over the last three years and I discuvered a trend. The only beers that I have made that didn't have this problem I have either added gypsum or added extract late in the boil. Good luck, and please post your results.

[snowman48360]

Thanks! I added LME and DME at beginning like kit suggested. Honey at flame out.
No gympsum or calcium added. Don't remember a precipitate of anything on pot except hops from when it tried to boil over at addition.

I remember 3/4 inch floculation is bottom of Carboy after 2 week primary and 1/8 inch floculation in bottom of secondary carboy after two weeks.

Beer seemed clear to me.

Beer tasted dryer on second day when I confirmed gravity and bottled. I guess I should have waited 3 days, to confirm gravity, but my son was availablne next and will be gone next week.

Thanks for the help. Im gonna do some searches on gypsum.

[snowman48360]

Just read AJ's primer on water.

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f128/brewin ... er-198460/

I'm a newbie. Didn't even think about the water.

Didn't want to brew with my tap water so I brewed extract with 3 gallons distilled water and 3 gallons spring water. No additions of gympsum or any thing else.

[cosmo]

I also found AJ's primer a couple weeks ago after discovering the connection to calcium in my notes. On Friday, I brewed a batch of american blonde with 1 t gypsum and 1 t calcium chloride. I added 1 lb of LME at the begining of the boil and 5 lbs at flameout. My water has moderate carbonate level and low calcium (Ward Labs test). I'm hoping that this batch will not have the problem. I'ts been about 50 or 60 batches since I've made a great tasting beer. I have also used RO and distilled water several times and that didn't solve the problem either. Here's my water report from Ward Labs:

pH 8.2
Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) Est 141
Electrical Conductivity, mmho/cm 0.23
Cations / Anions, me/L 2.1 / 2.0
ppm
Sodium, Na 6
Potassium, K < 1
Calcium, Ca 23
Magnesium, Mg 8
Total Hardness, CaCO3 91
Nitrate, NO3-N 5.6 (SAFE)
Sulfate, SO4-S 2
Chloride, Cl 10
Carbonate, CO3 9
Bicarbonate, HCO3 52
Total Alkalinity, CaCO3 57
Fluoride, F 0.03
Total Iron, Fe < 0.01
"<" - Not Detected / Below Detection Limit


The harsh flavor always shows up after about 2-3 weeks, either in the fermentor or the keg. I'll post my results.

[snowman48360]

Tried the 3/4 teaspoon of vinegar in a JW Dundee honey brown lager. My wife and I tasted and smelled more vinegar than in my brew. I'm hoping I just learned what green beer is. I've never tasted after secondary before. Will let you know.