IPA "Orange Juice Offness" troubleshooting

Extract/Partial Mash Brewing
1

Hello
I’m a fairly new home brewer and forgive me if this has been asked before, but I’m trying to figure out what I’m doing wrong with my IPA brewing.

I’ve had great success with the Milk Chocolate Stout kits but the IPA kits have been lackluster.

The last two IPA kits we’ve brewed have had similar “offness.” The kits were the Pliny Legacy and Dead Ringer kits.

When we tasted them prebottling, they almost had an orange juice/pineapple flavor but not much nose… at least not like they should have. The hops seem to almost have soured if that makes any sense.

Both kits we bottled, were like this at the early stages and then also had a weird sweetly sour taste to them.

I know I know I should go to a local home brew club, but, as far as I know, there isn’t any in our area.

Any help would be much appreciated.

2

Did you notice any scorched extract on the bottom of your brew kettle? I’ve read that scorched extract can leave sort of a “twang” off flavor.

3

No. The boil went well. No burning. The local brew shop mentioned fermenting temps. I remember thinking they may have been too cold but the shop said they might have been too warm. The thermometer outside the carboy ranged from 60-64.

4

What were the IPA kits? What was the yeast?

5

Lets go with the Dead Ringer since I’ve brewed it a few times. What yeast did you use? What was the temperature of the fermenting wort, not the ambient air temperature? How long did you primary before dry hopping? How long did you dry hop? What temperature did you bottle condition at and for how long? What was the water used for brewing?

6

Oh missed the kits. I’m guessing, but was the yeast was US-05? That yeast at low temps is known to throw peachy/weird fruity off flavors.

7

Thanks for the replies. I’ll repost after I look over my notes. I’m out of town right now.

8

Here are the notes for our entire process:

  1. Brought 2.5 gals of water to 165 degrees. Put grains in two grain bags & steeped with .25 oz of Amarillo hops for 20 mins. Stirred gently from time to time.
  2. Brought the kettle to 7.5 gallons total. Brought to a boil. Killed flame. Added 4 lbs of Pilsen DME. Had very slight boil over - a few drips.
  3. Added 10 ml of hopshot. Started timer for 90 mins. Added Columbus hops at 45 mins. Added simply select hops with 20 mins. left. Added Pilsen malt syrup with 15 min left in boil.
  4. At end of 90 mins, killed flame. Added .75 lb of corn sugar, 1.5 oz of centenial & 2.5 oz of Simply select hops & steeped for 20 mins.
  5. We used a wort chiller to chill the wort and then whisked the wort for about 5 minutes to aerate.
  6. Filled the 6.5 gal carboy to 6 gallons.
  7. Rehydrated 2 packets of the Safale US 05 yeast and pitched into the cooled wort.

We used a blow off on the carboy that blew off into a bucket of sanitizer. The fermentation lasted about a week. The temps were around 58-64 degrees.

We pitched the hops into the primary at about 10 days and 3 days till bottling.

9

The off flavor might be from fermenting US-05 below 65°F. In lightly hopped beers it is described as a peach flavor.

10

It’s more of a bitter/sweet taste - more bitter than sweet but not in a good way flavor.

The nose has an almost spoiled orange juice smell.

11

Water? Distilled, bottled, tap- well or municipal? Treated to remove chlorine/chloramine?

12

We have used water straight from the tap. It is well water.

I have yet to get the tap water tested.

The reason I ruled water out earlier is because we brewed a chocolate milk stout that came out amazingly good… but maybe that’s because the ingredients in that kit aren’t effected by water quality?

13

Dark grains work like an acid in the mash and lower the ph. So water that makes good dark beers might not make very good light colored beer

14

These were extract brews, so pH changes due to ion concentrations isn’t an issue. That said, it could be that the beers are bitter because they’re just too young. With my extract brews this faded after about one month of bottle conditioning, and was completely gone by no longer than three months in the bottle.

15

Oops :oops:

16

Thanks, guys. I’ll try waiting longer… It’s hard to haha. I’ll also try using bottled water.

17

Oops :oops: [/quote]
This isn’t necessarily true. Stepping grains are still subjected to pH. Although its extract its made with water ions already in it. If you use a water source with a particular high content of an ion it gets added to the total sum. Therefore this couls cause an off flavor. He’s using well water which is mor subject to this as there is no treatment.

18

I have very hard water and struggled with my lighter extract beers when I started. Didn’t know anything about water chemistry back then but looking back at which beers turned out better than others I’m nearly certain it was my hard water. Treating for chlorine certainly has helped some of the issues I had back then too.

Using RO water for now is a great first step to isolate what could be causing the off flavor.