Ok, so a little background: I'm not a new brewer, I just haven't bothered with most of the 'details' for the past couple years. I've probably done about 40-50 batches in the past couple years, most of solid quality, a few misses. But one thing that's always gotten me is how some of my beers end up tasting a fair bit maltier despite having a rough grain bill like others. There's nothing terribly consistent about my setup, but here's roughly what I'm working with, and apologies, but I'm metric...
-I'm all grain, and I generally use about 3-5kg of grain (I shoot for 3.5-5% ABV, typically-don't much care for strong beers) for a 19L (5 gallon) batch. My efficiencies in BeerSmith come out to between 60-70%, though I'm generally around 66%.
-Typically I go for a 1hr mash in a 30L bucket with a screen on the bottom to sparge directly in that container. I have *NO* idea what the distinction of light vs medium vs full-body means in BeerSmith, so I generally use the 'Single Infusion, Light Body, No Mash Out' option, which is 68.4C or 155F.
-I then add 2-4L (.5-1g) of near-boiling water to bring the temp back up over 71C/160F. Historically I would vourlaf, but I found that lowered my efficiency down to around 55-60%, so I just started tapping this directly and letting the grain settle while I sprinkled water over the grain.
-I collect 21-24L depending on whether I'm going for a 60-90' boil, boil and follow hop additions, chill, use an aquarium pump to aerate, then let ferment around 18C/65F.
Now for some beers (a simple session IPA I just made, for example) I get a heavy malty flavor when I was looking for a cleaner, dryer body. I used 3.8kg (8.3lbs) of grain (92% Pale, 8% Caraamber 60EBC) with a 1.068 IBU/SG ratio. I generally use S05 and typically get down in the 1.002-1.004 range and this one was no difference-finished at 1.003, but it's definitely got a heavy malt note to it. What am I doing wrong? I imagine it has everything to do with my mash/sparge, but I would rather tweak my method to head in the right direction rather than completely change everything and start from scratch. Any help would be appreciated-cheers!
-I'm all grain, and I generally use about 3-5kg of grain (I shoot for 3.5-5% ABV, typically-don't much care for strong beers) for a 19L (5 gallon) batch. My efficiencies in BeerSmith come out to between 60-70%, though I'm generally around 66%.
-Typically I go for a 1hr mash in a 30L bucket with a screen on the bottom to sparge directly in that container. I have *NO* idea what the distinction of light vs medium vs full-body means in BeerSmith, so I generally use the 'Single Infusion, Light Body, No Mash Out' option, which is 68.4C or 155F.
-I then add 2-4L (.5-1g) of near-boiling water to bring the temp back up over 71C/160F. Historically I would vourlaf, but I found that lowered my efficiency down to around 55-60%, so I just started tapping this directly and letting the grain settle while I sprinkled water over the grain.
-I collect 21-24L depending on whether I'm going for a 60-90' boil, boil and follow hop additions, chill, use an aquarium pump to aerate, then let ferment around 18C/65F.
Now for some beers (a simple session IPA I just made, for example) I get a heavy malty flavor when I was looking for a cleaner, dryer body. I used 3.8kg (8.3lbs) of grain (92% Pale, 8% Caraamber 60EBC) with a 1.068 IBU/SG ratio. I generally use S05 and typically get down in the 1.002-1.004 range and this one was no difference-finished at 1.003, but it's definitely got a heavy malt note to it. What am I doing wrong? I imagine it has everything to do with my mash/sparge, but I would rather tweak my method to head in the right direction rather than completely change everything and start from scratch. Any help would be appreciated-cheers!