Astringency

[maltbarley]

Ok, I seem to have chronically astringent beers. From what I have read, this may be from a hot sparge but my temps never appear to be out of whack. Has anyone ever experienced this?

[backyard brewer]

I believe most of my beers are astringent too. I think I'm over-sparging. Orange water is pretty hard and rather alkaline. 8.4 out of the tap last time I checked it. Anyway, I think those are the issues I'm having

[dhempy]

I don't think I have the astringency issues you are mentioning but then again I don't make that many light, hoppy beers.

I do reduce astringency in my stouts and porters by soaking crushed dark grain for several hours. I then raise the temp to 170 and add to the mash at mashout and vorlauf. This seems to keep the dark grain astringency reduced.

I do think Derrin is on the right track with the hardness issue. Have you tried a mash buffer yet? I've been using the 5.2 Mash Stabilizer by Five Star Products. I haven't gotten my pH meter working yet so I don't know how it really does. But I've seen several satisfied customer posts and I don't really notice an astringency issue with my relatively hard Camarillo water.

Dan

[lexuschris]

Tim & Derrin,

Did you find a solution to this issue? ... just curious...


--lexuschris

[backyard brewer]

Yeah, I solved the issue by just not having time to brew. None of my beers are astringent anymore...

[maltbarley]

With mine, I adjusted my thermometers and also added a probe (thanks Brewers Hardware) that drops down in the center of the mashtun to better measure the mash and sparge temps. I think I was sparging too hot before I got a good reading.