SWEETNES flavor to all my brews?

I have been brewing now for about 3 years and have tried multiple recipes from pale ales,IPA,farmhouse ale,blonde ales, pumpkin ale, pretty much many ales.
Every brew I have done has been decent but ALL have come with a sort of sweetness taste profile on the finish. Can anyone help try to figure out why? What may be the cause? Fermentation is usually between 64-68 for my ales depending on the yeast and mashing roughly at 152-153 using a pid controller and thermocoupler.
Any ideas to try on the next brew would be appreciated!

Could be a lot of things. Are these recipes you’ve developed yourself or kits? Sweetness is relative to personal taste. Sometimes oxidized beer has a sweet aftertaste for me. Obviously a beer that doesn’t have enough bittering hops will be sweet.

What kind of mash efficiency do you get? If you’re consistently hitting higher OG than targeted then you’d need to increase your bittering hops to offset the increased sugar content of your wort.

I have done kits as well as BeerSmith and my own recipes. I have not tried to increase my buttering hops which may be a good thing to try! I usually hit my OG or if not witching a couple degrees or so. Mash efficiency I just use iodine to make sure it’s converted after the hour mash, I don’t really get how to find my mash efficiency to be honest. I use a recirculating Electric BIAB system and just set my temp on my PID and a timer for what the mash length calls out for in the recipe.

Do you take a pre-boil gravity reading of your wort? Beersmith will calculate your mash efficiency if you plug that in.

Do you recirculate during the mash?

Post one recipe that had the most noticeable sweetness to it. Add OG and FG along with the yeast and water treatment.

I do recirculate during the mash. No I havnt generally taken pre-boil readings just after the boil.
Here is the most recent and sweetness one I did. Farmhouse ale for 90min boil with mash 153 and hour. OG:1.065
FG: 1.010

And you’re positive about that OG reading? That’s actually a few points lower than I’d expect on my system for that grist bill. I get a prediction of 1.071 at 80% efficiency.

Did you check the AA% and date of your hops? The OG is a little high for the style but not off the charts, If your hops AA is equal to what BS2 has in it then you’re within style parameters for bitterness but on the low side especially with regard to your bittering hops. I don’t brew saisons but honestly I would expect this recipe to have much hops presence at all which could come across as sweet.

That’s about all I’ve got based on the info provided. I would like to know more about your E-BIAB setup though…

Just guessing at some other possible factors.
Mash temperature higher than your thermometer indicated.
The type of Vienna malt used. Some can impart sweet flavors.
The yeast if this was WLP565.
Treatment of brewing water.

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So if mash temp is high it will result in a “sweetness”?

Search JCS Brewing on YouTube and can find a vid of my system I built.

yes, higher mash temps will result in a sweeter beer. Lower mash temps will result in a drier beer.

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Thank you all! I will try to add a bit more buttering how’s and a slightly lower mash temp and see if that resolves my issue. I normally do mash about 152-153, should I drop to say 148-149?

A good place to start, yes. Depends on the style of course. A Milk Stout, etc would be better with a higher mash temp.

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Consider the body, mouthfeel and flavor you want for the finished beer. Higher mash temps create sugars that are not as readily converted to alcohol by yeast so you get a fuller bodied sweeter wort and resulting beer. If you want a dry crisp beer shoot for lower mash temps, under 150 IME.

I also noticed in your video that the set point differential was 2°. I see that you changed that but are you sure? Another thing I also noticed that was that the PID was set at 125°. Although this should have theoretically turned your elements off the top reading was 134°. Correct me if I’m wrong but if your differential was 2° and the temp setting was 125° it shouldn’t have heated the water to 134°. If it’s over heating this could very easily be your problem. Imagine mashing at 159° rather than 150°. That’s substantial. Have you ever compared the PID temp compared to a trusted thermometer?

I actually noticed this after I did the video, I am waiting on a new thermo coupler as I found the one I was using was a bit wonkey at times. That being said, this is a newer system and I’ve only done one brew(which I will post a video I have of that soon) and I’ve gotten these flavors for many years with many different recipes and ways of Brewing using all grain 3teir and even at first mini mash brew I did in the beginning.

I see the FG is 1.010. That’s pretty low. If the sweetness were due to a high mash temp, that would mean un-fermentable sugars and that would show up as a higher FG. Am I wrong? At 1.010, I would expect that to be a rather dry beer.

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I’ll jump on the lack of a good bittering hop. On lighter brews, german magnum at 1/2 oz is my typical, darker brews, which mask some of the malts that bring fermentables to the party, then 1 oz. That is a good place to start also. Sneezles61

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1.010 fg for a saison is high. Most saisons finish like 1.002-1.006. For a dry beer 148-150 f med 151-153 full body 154-158. Final sweetness and body depend on more than just fg like stated above but mash temp is a good place to start. Also a beer can have sweet flavors with a low fg depending on the grain bill.

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Yep, 1.010 is high for a saison. you want that thing almost totally fermented out.

Work on:

  • Pitching enough healthy yeast
  • oxygenating your wort
  • mashing for fermentability

A saison is actually an ideal recipe to work on this problem because there is no lower limit to how dry it could/should be. So if you overshoot it, that’s one style where that’s a good thing.