Belle Saison questions / off flavours

[Fettucini]

We are a new micro brewery in South America, just got setup 3 months ago with a 700 litre system and have been focussing efforts on our main recipe, a hybrid saison with 20% wheat. We've been testing the recipe the last year on a smaller kit, making variations, trying other yeasts etc, and decided to go with Belle Saison for our main product for it's fresh citrus / fruity notes.

The first batch turned out great and went down very well at various beer festivals and events, as it did on the smaller kit, but the last two have developed harsh bitter off flavours that we can't place. Could this be caused by yeast autolysis? We've been having trouble with our cold crashing, only reaching 5.5 centigrade for 7 days and perhaps not dropping out as much yeast as we should out of suspension. The last two batches we kegged, and then filtered approximately 8 days later. Could this be a cause for residual yeast in the beer reacting and causing a bitterness?

If anyone has experience with Belle Saison we would greatly appreciate your feedback! We're convinced we're not treating the yeast right at some stage. The taste is harsh, bitter, almost medicinal that overpowers the nice flavours that this yeast produces normally, and ruining our beer!

[dmartin]

What is your water treatment process? It's springtime in Canada and a lot of cities up here add more chlorine to account with runoff.
Chlorine/chloromine can give that bandaid-water flavor, and if process/ferm temps haven't changed, that would be a good place to start.
Is this flavor present in any of your other batches?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Fettucini]

Actually we have a lot of chlorine in the city water here, but filter it through carbon filters which gets the bad chlorine taste out of the water, so i'm not sure if it's related to that.
We had a similar bitter taste appear in a previous batch, but it only seemed noticeable after about a week after filtering. It was a similar harsh bitterness that stayed on the roof of the mouth, but didn't seem to be the hops.
The new batch tastes really harsh, sort of band aid like, even after filtering. It's about 1% stronger in alcohol than the previous, 7% instead of 6% due to a higher percentage of pilsner grain, but same recipe otherwise.
I was wondering could underpitching cause a bitter taste with this yeast? We've been using 130 grams Belle Saison for 300 litre batches. The reason we've been underpitching is to try and accentuate those citric and fruity flavours the yeast produces. Just read that could cause a bitterness though stressing the yeast too much.
Fermentation temperatures - we've been starting at around 24 oC and taking it up to about 26oC. Found in the past this is a good range to bring out the sour/ fruitiness of the yeast.

[CraftBrewWater2]

Bitter Taste

Chlorine and/or Chloramines added to the water can affect your brew. We suggest your first step is to determine if the city is using Chloramines. Carbon filtration will remove Chlorine but not the ammonia in the Chloramine. To remove the ammonia, you need to filter with Cat Carbon filters.

Craft Brew Water

[Fettucini]

Thanks, we're going to get our filtered water tested to see what's in it.
After lots of reading on this harsh bitterness I'm assuming it's from an infection somewhere between the plate chiller and fermenter. We use mainly 1" butterfly valves but one of them for the cooling process is a 3 way 1" ball valve. I'm suspecting this could be the source of infection or the plate chiller. Going to not use this any more for the cold side, just stick to butterfly valves.