My beer is a bit sweet!

[Cidermaker]

Hi,

Thanks to everyone for their help re conditioning in bags (earlier thread).

Now, I've been drinking a fair bit of it lately, because it tastes nice. So far so good, but it does taste a little sweet to me. I used the London Pride recipe from Wheeler's book, OG 1050 in my case, FG 1008. Adding the priming sugar made no difference to the taste, so it wasn't that. Anyone got any views on why it's a bit sweet?

I was reading on Wikipedia, and it said there that the mash temperature affects sweetness, specifically how much unfermentable sugar was produced from the starch in the barley. Does this mean I need to control temp to withing a degree or two?

Any tips from old hands gratefully received.

Regards.

[Scotty]

any idea what temperature you mash at? A higher temperature will result in a sweeter beer, say 67-68c. Did you hit the FG of 1.008 or is that based upon Graham's recipe?

[Cidermaker]

Barley went into water at 72deg; it was 67deg when I wrapped up the tun (in a child's duvet, but don't ask what my children are sleeping in). Mashed for 90 mins, after which temp was 63.5deg.

The 1008 SG was measured.

Having said all this, I am drinking it now, having been to the pub, and I am sooooo pleased to say it tastes as good as a pub ale, albeit a little sweeter, and little less fizzy. (I was drinking Bombardier before.)

[Oscar Brewer]

I believe that Graham's book assumes a hop effeciency of 25% whereas many brewers including myself only manage to achieve about 20%. So all you need to do if you find your beer a little sweet is to increase the bittering hops slightly for the next batch you brew.

[Blackjack]

It would very well taste a little bit "sweeter" and more full bodied than most pub or bottle beer, ( can't remember ABV of Bombardier off hand) and what you have actually produced is not Fullers London Pride but Fullers ESB .
Your OG was 1050 and ESB and London Pride are partigyles with ESB being the first runnings. Your ABV will be somewhere around 5.5%.

The other comments about higher mash temp are correct, and my own take on this is...That it is the temp you start the mash at that is important, not the temp after 90mins. According to GW ( and others) sugar conversion at say 66 to 68 can be over and done with quite quickly say in 20 mins, and at a lower temp say 62/63/64 it is going to need all the 90 mins to get a good conversion. It was also discussed on here that mashing is exothermic, or perhaps more properly that the hydration of the dry malt generates heat. so during the first part of the mash the temperature will actually increase slightly, 1 or 2 degs.

Now, your OG was well over target and guessing you got your pre and post boil volume correct, the good reason for this is that GW very reasonably standardises on 75% efficiency in his book recipes leaving a little leeway, whereas a careful brewer using a temp. at the higher end of the range and sparging thoroughly will tend to get a much better figure, 85% to 90% is quite reasonable.

I may be a northerner myself brought up on proper 1970's Boddies but I do like nice round full bodied southern beers and pale ales brewed at a proper old fashioned OG. Enjoy

If you find it too sweet but want the strength in future try cutting the grain bill back by a fair amount and substituting Tate and Lyles Golden Slurp, which is partially inverted and will ferment out in its entirety leaving hopefully no taste of it's own sweetness.

[Cidermaker]

Thanks, Blackjack - that's great. I had no idea about partigyles - but it all makes sense. ESB not Pride, well, that would explain why my head hurt this morning.

I'm interested in what you say about the sugar extraction, and for my next brew, I'm going to be taking v. careful readings. I didn't get through all the liqour in the recipe, because by about 16L total, the spargings were coming out as water, so I stopped. The SG then was a bit above 1040. I lost about 1L during the boil, and when it cooled, I measured an SG of 1050. So next time, I'm going to be very careful with volumes and gravity measurements.

Do you have a view on how the temp affects the unfermentable sugars, which I suppose contribute to the sweetness? I suppose, too, that if it is about 5.5%, then the alcohol alone will make it taste a bit sweeter.

I'm enjoying brewing (and the beer) so much - my thanks to everyone who's given me advice on JBK!

[Blackjack]

Crikey, not me, I only know what I read from GW and Mr Palmer etc.

http://www.howtobrew.com/sitemap.html
and on Wikipaedia etc.

BUT... we mash at a compromise temperature that is too warm for beta-amylase that cuts off neat snippets of easy fermentable sugars and a bit cool for alpha-amylase that does a bit of a chainsaw massacre and produces both fermentable sugars and non-fermentable sugars. It is these dextrins which are not really sweet but give some of the body to a beer.

Now OG 1050 minus FG 1008 gives an attenuation of 0.042 divided by a little less than eight gives an ABV of about 5.4 or 5.5%. All of that very light gravity alcohol is counterbalanced by dextrins and other stuff dissolved to give the FG of 1008.

Now you mention sparge of 16lts and loss to boil of 1lt?. presumable you are not making a standard 5 gall brew length?. Are you batch or fly sparging. I batch sparge and find that on the third sparge the product is getting towards watery to give me a total volume of 30lts which boils down to 23lts after 90mins. There is less problem with batch sparging than fly sparging since with Fly at the end the top of the mash really has been rinsed and is starting potentially to leach tannins.

[Cidermaker]

Well, I was making the 19L recipe from the book, but after 16L, it was running off as water. Not sure what batch or fly sparging are, but what I did was to put a piece of alu foil over the mash, poke lots of holes in it with a knife, and then gently pour jugs of hot water over it.

Maybe I could have added more water to reduce the SG, but I was worried that would also dilute flavours. I was a bit surprised the the SG went up so much with the loss of only 1 part in 16 volume, which is why I think I'm going to be more careful measuring next time.

Regards.

[Blackjack]

Cidermaker
I have sent you a PM
JP

[Spud395]

If your beer fermented to 1008 there are not to many unfermented sugars in there, 1008 is on the dry side
I'd imagine you may have underdid the hops

[coatesg]

Agreed - 1008 is dry, especially for a beer that started at 1050. It's probably just a balance issue which some more hop bitterness may well fix.

Of note, 16L @ 1050 diluted back to 19L gives about 1042 - which is much more like Pride. It should be fine to dilute back in this way pre-boil if you don't have enough liquid after the sparge - for weaker beers you'll often reach a low enough gravity during the sparge to stop well before you use all the planned sparge water. If you batch sparge, then you don't tend to have this issue.

[Cidermaker]

BREAKING NEWS ... BREAKING NEWS ...

It's not sweet anymore. So I suppose it must have been that there were still some sugars in it, which have now fermented out. Which suggest that my 1008 measurement was spurious. I shall test it with my hydrometer when I get a chance ...

[Blackjack]

BREAKING NEWS ... BREAKING NEWS ...

It's not sweet anymore. So I suppose it must have been that there were still some sugars in it, which have now fermented out. Which suggest that my 1008 measurement was spurious. I shall test it with my hydrometer when I get a chance ...

there is not much "wiggle room" left for the hydrometer it may be just your tatse buds