Dry Tasting Beers

Brewer #253491

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My last 3 beers are tasting dry on the pallet, very nice flavour beers but quite dry on the back of the tongue.
I use a Brew Monk 30l system and the mashing temperature on all 3 beers has been correct and has been verified with two separate thermometers during the mash, so I don't think this is the issue.
PH readings are bang on from mashing through to kegging.
The beers were a Pale Ale, Pilsner and NEIPA. All these beers where transferred under pressure.
I fill the serving keg with Chemsan solution as per instructions and apply co2 until the keg is emptied, then carry out a closed transfer from fermenter to serving keg using co2.
Would the excess Chemsan solution left behind in the serving keg cause the dry taste in the final beer?
Any thoughts would be grateful.

Thanks in advance
 
I can’t speak to the ChemSan, but what was your grain bill on each of these and what yeast did you use?
 
After watching countless videos of "Don't fear the foam" from home brewers with StarSan I wouldn't think a small amount of residual Chemsan would cause the problem. I am new to brewing so I don't have a lot of experience to quantify my statement yet. My first beer ended up with very dry mouth feel because I added glucoamylase amylase enzyme after I had cooled the wort. Out of curiosity did you final gravities end up where you expected them?
 
What temp did you use for the mash and how long? Do you know what attenuation you got and what yeast you used? Or if you don't have the attenuation, do you have the original and final gravity?

It may just be that you're creating really fermentable wort (something many brewers would kill for). I love a dry beer so I'm aiming for this and I'll mash at lower temperatures (65C/ 150F). I also used to mash longer, around 90 minutes, but I'm finding I'm getting really fermentable beers with a standard 60 minute mash, so if I'm looking for something less dry I'm pushing the mash temp up to 69C/156F.
 
My last 3 beers are tasting dry on the pallet, very nice flavour beers but quite dry on the back of the tongue.
I use a Brew Monk 30l system and the mashing temperature on all 3 beers has been correct and has been verified with two separate thermometers during the mash, so I don't think this is the issue.
PH readings are bang on from mashing through to kegging.
The beers were a Pale Ale, Pilsner and NEIPA. All these beers where transferred under pressure.
I fill the serving keg with Chemsan solution as per instructions and apply co2 until the keg is emptied, then carry out a closed transfer from fermenter to serving keg using co2.
Would the excess Chemsan solution left behind in the serving keg cause the dry taste in the final beer?
Any thoughts would be grateful.

Thanks in advance
"Dry on the back of the tongue..." If you can post your recipe and process, we may be of more help.
 
I can’t speak to the ChemSan, but what was your grain bill on each of these and what yeast did you use?

First Grain Bill.
Pilsner 92%
Melanoiden 2.8%
Vienna 5.1%
Lallemand Diamond Lager Yeast.

Second Grain Bill. Used up left over grains
Pilsner 80%
Vienna 8%
Wheat Malt 5.3%
Crystal Malt 4%
Flaked Oats 2.7%
Nottingham Yeast. Lallemand

Third Grain Bill.
Lager Malt 56%
Pale Malt 15.1%
Flaked Oats 8.5%
Oat Husks 3.8%
Wheat Malt 7.5%
Verdant IPA Yeast
 
Dry on the back of the tongue is more likely an issue of astringency. I'd be looking at water chemistry or possible tannins from mash temps PH, etc..
 
Do you have any idea what your water chemistry is? I've done exactly the same thing with starsan multiple times and never had any issue so I wouldn't worry to much about that.
 
At this point we have two potential runners: Astringency, as JA mentioned, is a possibility. Think of it as a dry, puckery mouthfeel more than a taste, kind of like the taste you get when you over-steep tea. Water chemistry could be a runner as well, provided either your water is very high in sulfate or you added gypsum. I've looked up Chemsan, it looks a lot like Star-San (phosphoric acid is the primary sanitizing agent), it should produce tartness if present in excess. I'd tend toward astringency, as it's the simplest of the two issues to create. Two causes: Either you sparged too hot (likely) or you let the pH of your sparge get too high (not as likely if batch sparging).
 
Thanks for the suggestions and comments. Work has kept me busy, so this is the first chance I've had this week to reply.
I've had a look over my recipes and notes taken on the brew days and its possible astringency could be the culprit like J A and Nosybear suggest.
I use 4 stage RO water and a TDS meter to confirm the RO system is working efficiently. I add salt additions recommended to match the water profile of the beers, a little gypsum on one beer none on the other.

This is the process for the last 2 beers which is pretty much identical, except one was heavily dry hopped the other not and both have this dry mouthfeel.

Mash temp 66c and length 60 minutes with a recirculating mash. I do stir 20 minutes in to improve efficiency.
I mash out at 75c for 10 minutes BUT the temp might increase slightly a few degrees with the delay of the element turning off and thermometer reading the wort temp of 75c, could this cause astringency?
Ph of the mash is 5.2 helped by a small amount of lactic or Phosphoric acid recommended by software. Fly sparge water is 10l at 75c which was heated and stored in an Igloo cooler before mash started.
Ph of fly sparge runnings was 5.2 at the end. Ph meter calibrated before readings taken.
60 minute boil with no bittering hops. Cool to 80c add steeping hops and whirlpool for 30 minutes at 80c. Cool to 20c with copper immersion chiller, remove chiller, let trub settle for 10 minutes with lid on the drain in to fermenter. Blast with oxygen for a minute, pitch rehydrated dry yeast, placed in fermentation fridge at 19c and leave alone for 2 weeks. Dry hop for 3 days, cold crash, transfer, carb, mature and drink.
Attenuation of beers IPA 73% and NEIPA 71%.

Could the mash out be the culprit or something in my process, maybe acid additions?
 
The mash out is not entirely necessary. You can run the sparge at mash temperature if you suspect that you are extracting tannins during the process.
 
Mash temp 66c and length 60 minutes with a recirculating mash. I do stir 20 minutes in to improve efficiency.

If I'm not mistaken, 66c is about 150f. That is your main culprit in my opinion. Your creating too many simple sugars that are getting gobbled up by the yeast and your FG is probably close to 1.000. Bump your mash to 67c/152f for some more complex sugars and less dry beer.
 
If I'm not mistaken, 66c is about 150f. That is your main culprit in my opinion. Your creating too many simple sugars that are getting gobbled up by the yeast and your FG is probably close to 1.000. Bump your mash to 67c/152f for some more complex sugars and less dry beer.
Check out the original post. He notes attenuation of 73 and 71 percent...that's not going to get to a very low FG. Also, I've never seen 150F produce an overly-fermentable beer. Mash temps of 146 to 148 might get higher attenuation but even then, FG of 1.000 would be highly unusual - maybe with some Belgian yeasts.
 
Check out the original post. He notes attenuation of 73 and 71 percent...that's not going to get to a very low FG. Also, I've never seen 150F produce an overly-fermentable beer. Mash temps of 146 to 148 might get higher attenuation but even then, FG of 1.000 would be highly unusual - maybe with some Belgian yeasts.

150 can definitely make dry beers. I shoot for that temperature with saisons and some lagers, myself.

I did see his attenuation numbers, but without gravity numbers those are meaningless. 73% attenuation on a 1.040 beer will be fairly dry.

I'm not discounting astringency. He could be building the RO backup wrong. Personally, I'm against the use of RO water. I feel a good carbon filter is way better, under most circumstances.
 
I did see his attenuation numbers, but without gravity numbers those are meaningless. 73% attenuation on a 1.040 beer will be fairly dry.
I agree that gravity numbers are important to the equation but 73% attenuation on a 1.040 gravity is leaving a 1.010 finished beer. I doubt anyone would consider that overly dry. Lagers are routinely 1.008 or lower. Even a 1.030 OG would yield an FG of 1.007. That would a very watery beer but I can't quite imagine how that might translate to "quite dry on the back of the tongue".
If the OP were seeing much higher attenuation, I'd be more inclined to go along with the mash temp idea. As it stands, though, if you've still got almost 30 percent of the fermentable sugars in the finished beer, I don't see how that can account for the problem.
 
Personally, I'm against the use of RO water. I feel a good carbon filter is way better, under most circumstances.
These two methods serve different purposes. An activated carbon filter is primarily to remove organic compounds, while reverse osmosis is to (try to) remove everything that isn't H2O by what can be considered an extremely fine filter, which includes minerals the carbon can't touch. Many RO systems use a carbon pre- and post-filter to get stuff the RO membrane can't get.

If the goal is to approach chemically pure H2O, a carbon filter is inferior to reverse osmosis. But, I don't think that should be the goal in brewing: We like minerals. But if you want organic compounds removed (pesticides, bacteria, etc.) then carbon is what you want.

That being said, I fill my brew bucket with water from the garden hose...
 
These two methods serve different purposes. An activated carbon filter is primarily to remove organic compounds, while reverse osmosis is to (try to) remove everything that isn't H2O by what can be considered an extremely fine filter, which includes minerals the carbon can't touch. Many RO systems use a carbon pre- and post-filter to get stuff the RO membrane can't get.

If the goal is to approach chemically pure H2O, a carbon filter is inferior to reverse osmosis. But, I don't think that should be the goal in brewing: We like minerals. But if you want organic compounds removed (pesticides, bacteria, etc.) then carbon is what you want.

That being said, I fill my brew bucket with water from the garden hose...
I installed an RO filter so I could get repeatable results. Got tired of the mash pH settling at 5.3 today and 5.5 tomorrow. Tap water is variable and as a quality geek, the more variables you can eliminate the better the end product. So to decide, read anything you can get your hands on from Martin Brungard, he's the alpha geek when it comes to brewing water.
 
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Thanks for the suggestions and comments. Work has kept me busy, so this is the first chance I've had this week to reply.
I've had a look over my recipes and notes taken on the brew days and its possible astringency could be the culprit like J A and Nosybear suggest.
I use 4 stage RO water and a TDS meter to confirm the RO system is working efficiently. I add salt additions recommended to match the water profile of the beers, a little gypsum on one beer none on the other.

This is the process for the last 2 beers which is pretty much identical, except one was heavily dry hopped the other not and both have this dry mouthfeel.

Mash temp 66c and length 60 minutes with a recirculating mash. I do stir 20 minutes in to improve efficiency.
I mash out at 75c for 10 minutes BUT the temp might increase slightly a few degrees with the delay of the element turning off and thermometer reading the wort temp of 75c, could this cause astringency?
Ph of the mash is 5.2 helped by a small amount of lactic or Phosphoric acid recommended by software. Fly sparge water is 10l at 75c which was heated and stored in an Igloo cooler before mash started.
Ph of fly sparge runnings was 5.2 at the end. Ph meter calibrated before readings taken.
60 minute boil with no bittering hops. Cool to 80c add steeping hops and whirlpool for 30 minutes at 80c. Cool to 20c with copper immersion chiller, remove chiller, let trub settle for 10 minutes with lid on the drain in to fermenter. Blast with oxygen for a minute, pitch rehydrated dry yeast, placed in fermentation fridge at 19c and leave alone for 2 weeks. Dry hop for 3 days, cold crash, transfer, carb, mature and drink.
Attenuation of beers IPA 73% and NEIPA 71%.

Could the mash out be the culprit or something in my process, maybe acid additions?
I have been fighting a hint of astringency when using my well water in my darker beers lately. Been chasing down many rabbit holes in my research. I don’t see a problem with your mash out. Your process looks good. It would help to know your final gravity numbers. As mentioned above, a thin beer can represent a dry taste accentuating salts, hops and process off flavors.

You could try a batch sparge instead of fly sparging. Maybe shorten the mash out to five minutes and same for a batch sparge.

How were your grains milled? If the grind is fine and/or husks are shredded much, tannins can be extracted ahead of the kettle. This is one of the areas I am working on by taking my mill gap from .032 to .035”and conditioning grains with a few ounces of misted water prior to milling.

I assume grains or husks are not making it to your kettle. But something to think about. I filter all runnings to the BK with a SS hop spider.

Don’t know how long you have been brewing, but those can be challenging beers, more so than a basic Pale or dark beer. Hope this helps and that you cross this threshold. :)

Edit - Are you sure you want a mash and runnings pH of 5.2? I tried going low on my IPAs and didn’t like the flavor so went back up to 5.4. I use lactic and find increasing the Calcium eliminates the need for lactic and helps with clarity.
 
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Most people are so used to drier beer finishes these days that my hunch is this beer is more than just well-attenuated. Without knowing what beer styles brewer 243591 is accustomed to, I’d be less likely to reconsider the 66c (medium low). Naturally raising it above the recipe range will affect perceived dryness. Unless you have a distinguished pallet, or are excessively dry-hopping, I’d suspect tannins to be the dry-tongue off-flavor that would be notable enough to seek further advice. I’m definitely reading between the lines here and OP can help correct me if I am wrong about the nature of the off-flavor and desired correction.
 

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