Citra / Rakau PA harsh bitterness / off flavours / ageing

[Cain Harland]

I have just started pouring a rebrew of my Zombie dust (all citra) clone the only difference in the recipe is this time I added 50g (40L brew) of rakau late. The last one was bottle conditioned and this is kegged. This one is a fair bit lighter in color but doesn't taste right. It has a sharp bitterness like tonic water or rubber which seems to be subsiding noticeably during the few days its been in the keg.

The last one according to my notes I couldn't fault but wasn't excited about to start with but it aged really well the citrus fading a bit and a lichee or Mellon type fruitiness devloping. I found that strange as PAs are generally best fresh but really liked it. This one doesn't seem to have much of a citrus or fruit character.

I was initially thinking autolysis but there shouldn't have been time for that. It had 2 week ferment then 2 week cold crash, racked to keg forced carbed at 30psi for 2 days then dropped to 10psi.

Any ideas where I went wrong? Is a 2 week cold crash too long for beer to sit on dry hops? I'm wondering if a couple of weeks aging might help and if I should take it out of the keggerator and age at say 18 degrees to speed things up.

I also crused a bit fine and got the closest to a stuck mash I've had so tannins are a possibility.

[Grant R Baker]

I always dry hop after primary (7-10 days) is complete then rack to another vessel for dry hopping (flame on the non-secondary boys but I like to get the beer off the dead yeast cake).

 

I have tried dry hopping on top of primary.. didn't like the result. Have also dry hopped in the keg, nothing wrong with this method in my book (stanizied hop bag, marbels and ping pong balls)... but I prefer a glass carboy for secondary and dry hopping.

Normally DH for 7-10 days then crash for 2+ before racking to the keg.

If I had a nice big SS Conical I would dump the yeast cake then DH on top.

[Nathan]

Oh yeah I pull the yeast before dry hopping I have a conical though 

[Cain Harland]

Update on this one 2% acidulated malt in my latest brew and none of this flavor. So Im putting it down to a combination of napier water and gladfields malt both being a bit alkaline causing some tannin extraction

[James Guilford]

I am interested to see your future results. I too am brewing with Napier water and (through a less educated methodology) will be working some acidulated malt into my PAs as I was noticing some astringency using mostly Gladfield malts. I am estimating pH (using Bru'n water) at present but was thinking around 2% was a good start. I can't recall where I read but possibly Gladfield malts are around 0.3 higher pH?

[David R]

Can't help with the problem, but what do you think of the recipe? I've been thinking of giving it a crack, I love Citra so can't go wrong eh...

[Cain Harland]

I loved it the first time. Second not so much but I think problems are about water chemistry not recipe.