Tannins in the Mash

February 7, 2014 by 4 Comments
375px-Tannic_acid.svg

Too much tannin your beer can give it an iced-tea like puckering character.

Tannins are polyphenols found in a wide variety of plants, distributed among various tissues. In a later article, I’ll discuss the basic chemistry of the tannins relevant to brewing. (The types of tannins that end up in beer from the malt are different from those that originate in the hops.) In this article, however, we’ll treat them as a group because they are all related chemically, the factors that affect them are the same, and the consequences if they get in your beer are the same. I’ll discuss tannins extracted in the mash today, and cover tannins in the boil over the weekend.

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Tannins for Brewers (The Basics)

February 5, 2014 by 8 Comments
Tannin_heap

Tannin powder. (Photo by Simon E. Eugster, via Wikipedia, under Creative Commons license.)

As brewers, we often hear about tannins and how they are bad for our beer. But what are tannins? Where do they come from and how do they affect our beer? In this article, I’ll give an overview of tannins and their role in brewing. In a second article, I’ll discuss the nitty-gritty details of how tannins enter the brewing stream, and how to influence the rate at which they do in your home brewery. In a third article, I’ll discuss a little of bit of the chemistry of specific tannins that come from barley malt, hops and oak barrels.

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