Your brewing beer and sometimes its great and other times its not quite up to snuff, well today I am going to tell you about some common off flavors and how to avoid them.
Let start out with some of the most common off flavors.....
Astringency: this is a drying tannic taste that is like sucking on a tea leaf, almost a feeling of the water being lifted right off your tongue, it can also have a slight sour or puckering characteristic. This is normally caused by squeezing your grain sack as a extract brewer, or over sparging as a all grain brewer. It can also be caused if you grind your grain to small and end of with it in the kettle (boiling grain can cause astringency along with harsh dry bitterness and aftertaste)
Acetaldehyde: This is a taste of fresh cut green apples, apple juice can also be a cause of a wicked hangover. It is can be caused by an infection or bacteria but is most often a product of poor wort oxidation or removing the yeast from the primary too soon. Do yourself a favor and always leave your yeast in primary for at least 2 weeks, just because its not bubbling doesn't mean there not working. And for god sacks always aerate your wort, the oxygen before primary starts helps the yeast to replicate and build into larger numbers so they can eat all that sugar you made and turn it into Delicious clean alcohol.
Alcoholic: By this I don't mean that your beer has alcohol in it, I mean that it smells like alcohol (vodka, boozy) and it has a very warming sensation going down, this doesn't mean you just made a beer with more alcohol in it this means you produced high fusil ethyl alcohol, its not real pleasant. It is usually caused by too high of fermentation temperatures, but can also be caused by not pitching enough yeast and they got stressed out, also once again by not aerating your wort enough (seeing a pattern). Making a starter will greatly improve the over all flavor of your beer as well as adequately aerating your wort. MAKE YOUR YEAST HAPPY AND THEY WILL MAKE YOU HAPPY!
Overly Bitter : Harsh dry taste on the back of your tongue, lets be honest if your a beer drinker you know what bitterness is, and sometimes its overly bitter. Most commonly this is a recipe flaw, too much hops, dark malts, roasted malts etc... but sometimes it can also be a cause of high levels of magnesium sulfide or salt mineral content in your water source. One other is if your kegging or bottling not properly rinsing out all of the cleaning agent (one step, PBW) will cause a intense bitter aftertaste, so always make sure to rinse very well.
Diacetyl: Most people know this as a lager killer, it is a butter, toffee, butterscotch flavor, most people will think movie theater popcorn butter because movie theater butter uses diacetyl as the main flavor. It can also cause a slickness to the palate. If you have a butter beer this is most of the time caused by sleepy yeast, meaning that you temperature was too cold, or that you removed the beer from the yeast too soon (once again leave it alone for a couple weeks) It can also be an early sign of oxidation or over aeration (but very rarely and normally only with pure o2) So make sure your temp is not too cool and your leaving it on the yeast for the appropriate time.
Dimethylsulfide - Or as others will call it DMS, this is a sweet cooked corn flavor in your beer, can also smell like corn on the cob or vegital.
The most common cause for new brewers is leaving the lid on during the boil, DMS is produced in every beer but it gets boiled off, so if you leave the lid on your putting it right back into the beer. Another cause is not cooling fast enough, big part of making beer well is getting the temperature down from boiling to below 80 as quickly as possible for two reasons 1.) less chance of infection. 2.) DMS starts production after boiling has ended and you need to get it below production temperatures as quickly as possible before it regroups back in the beer. Wort chillers are awesome for this. It can also be caused again by low fermentation temperatures, so again take care of your yeast!
Sherry Like: This is caused oxidized members of the melanoiden family, basically you weren't careful enough when transferring, it can also have a papery or cardboard flavor to it, if your not sure what that taste like consult your local postage store and ask for a sample.
Sour/acid/horse hair: YOUR BEER IS INFECTED! Be more careful sanitizing (sanitizing is completely different from cleaning) That can be cause by skin flakes aka dust in your beer, not cooling quick enough, not enough yeast to combate the infectors, poorly washed hands. The criminals are acetobactin, brettomyces, lacto baccilus, and peddiococus. Take very good care of sanitation!
Poor Head retention: Most common is going to be low level of cabonation. If its that make sure the sugar is mixed in better before bottling and make sure your bottles are kept at room temperature for at least 2 weeks. Other reasons are most likely not enough protein in your beer. Protein is what causes head in your beer, it can be reduced by protein rests in all grain (not necessary anymore due to the highly modified malts everyone is using now, and yes that includes organic) Also by higher levels of alcohol and gravity. If you make a 14% behemoth don't expect it to have a 6" solid rock of foam!
Those are the most common off flavors that all brewers eventually run into and how to help steer clear of them, keep brewing and until next time, enjoy a pint for me!
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