Spot that flaw - Cigarette/Campfire taste

[ajcarp]

I was hosting a beer tasting last night, and one of the attendies brought in a home brew he had made and wanted some comments on it. He said it was an Oatmeal stout, made from an all grain kit consisting of 2 row Gambrinus (we are only 1 hr away from the malt house) Pale, Munich 10L, Flaked Oats and Roasted Barley as the grains, Northern Brewer and EFG as the hops and used the kit Nottingham Dry Yeast. He said the background taste was OK, but that it had an overriding taste of cigarette butts.

Being the brave soul that I am, and wanting to help a fellow brewer out, I took a taste. I could see where he was going with the cigarette butts, but I thought it was more in line with a smoldering campfire. Sounds delicious, right !

This is not a flaw I have tasted, or hear of before and I wonder if anyone else here on the forum has a better clue than I.

The guy sells and installs industrial equipment and has built an automated brewhouse on his own. This is only his 4th beer through the process and he is still using kits before trying his own recipe formulation. All of the equipment is stainless, including the pumps and piping. He cleans it all out with StarSan between each batch and flushes throughly before starting. I'll be going over there Sunday to watch his next brew and will watch carefully to see if I can pick up anything.

The only thing I can tell him for now is to let it sit for a month or so in the keg, and see if the campfire taste mellows out. Any suggestions from the experts.

[RubberToe]

How does he brew, electric or propane? RIMS?

Trub can burn on an element giving a similar taste. Some grist is worse than others, like wheat. For example I decided to simmer a Hefeweizen for a day and a bit and I ruined my massive effort with a simmilar result. Ashy tasting.

[CorneliusAlphonse]

Yeah I had that sort of a taste in a Granite beer recently, it was suggested they didn't stir their mash well (electric element sit directly in the mash/grains). Could be something similar to that.Otherwise, too much roast barley could give a charred taste maybe

[Jayme]

Hard to say for sure without tasting it, but phenolics can create some smokey flavours.

[Tony L]

Too much Black Patent will do that. Use too much and you definatly will get an ashtray taste in your beer.

Having said that, roast barley could come across like that to some people sometimes.

[LiverDance]

http://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/acrid" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I believe it would be a combo of the water make up and the roast barley. If he doesn't want to get into water chemistry just yet tell him to keep his dark malts out of the mash and put them in the sparge, this should help out.

[ajcarp]

He brews electric. I don't believe he has a heating element in the mash tun, but I think he said he recirculates the water during the mash. Slowly pumping it out of the tun to his electric hot liquor tank and back into the mash.

How does he brew, electric or propane? RIMS?

Trub can burn on an element giving a similar taste. Some grist is worse than others, like wheat. For example I decided to simmer a Hefeweizen for a day and a bit and I ruined my massive effort with a simmilar result. Ashy tasting.

[ajcarp]

http://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/acrid

I believe it would be a combo of the water make up and the roast barley. If he doesn't want to get into water chemistry just yet tell him to keep his dark malts out of the mash and put them in the sparge, this should help out.

Hi LD,

"Acrid". Nice word, but the taste in this beer is not really a strong or overwhelming one. It is however, upfront and apparent.

Ivan, that is his name, would have no problem learning more about water chemistry and I believe he already has done some analysis of his water source. Any suggestions along this line to reduce the possibility of this taste.

[BBrianBoogie]

I agree with Jayme, I suspect phenols.

[LiverDance]

John, he may want to try adding the dark malts at the sparge or maybe try cold steeping them and adding that to the brew pot, this would help to smooth out the flavors from the dark malts. And as an off question where is he getting his water from? I had got wicked phenols like that before but I was talking my brewing water from the garden hose.

[mr x]

Need to know the percentage of roasted barley.

[ajcarp]

Need to know the percentage of roasted barley.

X man,

I'll working on getting the grain bill but Ivan is out of town working for the week. He will dig up the grain bill from the kit instructions when he gets back and I'll post it.

I did notice a couple of things about his process as I was watch him on Sunday. For more on his, to me, amazing home brewery, see my separate post on "Ivan's automated Dig Dog Brewery".

The things I did notice where;

1. His mash temperature was really low because of the placement of the temperature sensor. The system recirculates the water during the mash by draining from the bottom, pumping it thru a separate coil in the HLT, which is set to keep it's water at the sparge temperature, then back into the tun through an input high on the mash wall. The temperature sensor is actually in the input water and the grain bed itself was over 15 F lower.
The system, in theory, would sense when the mash temperature was low, then recirculate to heat some water and pump it back into the mash. However, the pump was on way to much. Once the grain bed comes up to temperature, I've found them to be fairly stable.
He is also not mixing, stirring, the grain bed. Even to start with. This causes even more problems because of the large flow rate of the recirculated water. It shoots out of the input, high on the mash tun wall, and splashes steadily down on the far side of the tun. I'm sure this causes some large temperature gradients to form in the tun. One part too hot, one too cold.
So, for now, I'm getting him to a) Use the sparge sprinkler device, imagine one leg of a camera gorrilla tripod, hollow, with holes along it, during the mash recirculation as well as during the sparge and b) Stir, or devise a mechanical method of stirring and finally c) Use his laser thermometer to take the temperature of the grain bed, and adjust the temperature in the HLT higher until he gets to his desired mash temp.

2. He is using a bubbling device in the HLT and kettle to get the volume. Don't ask me how it works, but I guess the pressure it take to push out an air bubble into the bottom of the tank, after calibrated, tells him how much volume is in the tank. I really don't think that bubbling air into the wort as it is sparged and before the boil is bad, but I really don't know. I really thought he should be using a mechanical float type volume sensor.

So bottom line, the best guess so far is that the taste is caused by overheating the roasted barley in the recipe.

Now let me finish my Midnight Sun Coffee Porter.

ps: tell x-woman hello for us

[AllanMar]

I have my MT sensor in the inlet (HERMS outlet) as well and circulate continously (I just set HLT 2 deg higher then MT). Temps equalize out pretty well, I have one on the MT outlet too for monitoring (although ive been experimenting with averaging the two with pretty good results).

2. He is using a bubbling device in the HLT and kettle to get the volume. Don't ask me how it works, but I guess the pressure it take to push out an air bubble into the bottom of the tank, after calibrated, tells him how much volume is in the tank. I really don't think that bubbling air into the wort as it is sparged and before the boil is bad, but I really don't know. I really thought he should be using a mechanical float type volume sensor.

I use one of these too on my HLT and BK (its popular with the brewtroller folks. It's just a small pressure sensor, the bubbler is there to replace the air as with the heat it can bubble out and then your screwed). Keeping in mind the higher gravity in the BK will actualy throw the reading off a bit if its calibrated with water (I would say negliable).

I'm interested to see more details on the brewery.

[mr x]

Just for comparison, I've done the BCS method of grinding black patent into dust for the mash. I'm thinking ph or water issue, but it would have to be way out on ph, as iirc, the black malt I used brought it down so far, I'd never sparge it back up...

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 4

[jason.loxton]

Both suggestions (black malt and phenols) seem reasonable. I have had infections that produced flavours that could be described as burnt, initially. Combined with a lot of roasted malt that could be the culprit. I'd say grab a bottle, put it somewhere warm for a little bit, and see if it gets worse. If it does, it is an infection. If not, it is process or ingredients.