Hey guys, im relatively new to AG brewing and have just bottled my 3rd batch. My first batch was a brown ale which turned out great!! However on my next two batches i seem to be getting a bitter / astringent (metallic? makes you want to pucker) taste that was not present in my first batch. Could this be that i have added too much bittering hops? Another thing which i did differently with the second and third batch was i used starsan as sanitizer. Because of the flavour that i am getting it is making me think that starsan (not rinsing the bubbles from the carboy) may be causing this. Or maybe the beer has not conditioned enough, my second batch (pale ale) is about 7 weeks old in the bottle. Anyone else had this problem? Solutions?

Batch 1 (Brown Ale): P - 2 Weeks, S - 2 Weeks, Bottle: 2 Months

Batch 2 (Pale Ale): P - 3.5 Weeks, Bottle 7 Weeks

Batch 3 (Amber Ale): P - 2.5 Weeks, Bottle last night

Also i am looking to get some brewing software. Any recommendations? Im running a Mac

Thanks for the help!

Landon

You could also be grinding the grain to fine. You want to crack the barley open, that's all. If you see a lot dust after crushing, the husk is being ground and this will cause astringency.

Matty

Thanks for the help, everything i have read is saying that the starsan is not the issue so i can cross that off, for now at least. The grain i am using was milled at the vinyard so this also should not be the issue. What about the metal of the brew kettle, my kettle is aluminum? I am also going to try some kind of filter while transfering the wort from the boil kettle to the primary does anybody do this? What is your process here? Could the cold and hot break material be contributing off flavours during rest period before bottling? Thanks again for the information, i will try to keep you posted on my solutions.

Landon

I am begging to believe that my problem here is not really a problem but rather it is just the bitter taste that i am getting from the hops. I think i am so used to the taste of the standard lager beer types that the fresh hop bitterness seems off to me. Im going to try and reduce the amount of bittering hops for my next recipe and see what i come out with.

Landon