Possibly too much crystal malt. Also could be from melanoidin malt or aromatic malt. I had this happen on my most recent ESB, and I'm sure it's a combination of both. I used almost 20% crystal malt (too much) plus melanoidin on top of it. Yeah, I overdid it. I still like the beer, but it's a bit cloying, and could be perceived by less experienced folks as tasting "extracty" and actually does taste rather "syrupy".
Could also be from too much oxygen in how you handle the fermenting beer. Do you rack to secondary after the first few days in primary? If so, don't next time, and then see if the problem goes away in those subsequent batches. Also you could try purging your racking vessels and kegs (if you keg) with CO2 gas prior to racking to push all the oxygen out before ever racking the beer. Possibly could also be a leak in your hoses allowing oxygen in. And along with that...
Could possibly also be a contamination thing. Are you using old plastic fermenters and hoses? It's a good practice to replace all that soft stuff at least every ~18 months, because once it gets any small amount of contamination at all, it will never die, no matter how much sanitizer you throw at it. It builds some kind of immunity to it, and thus just needs to be replaced. This being said..... this probably is NOT your issue. It's either oxygen, or recipe formulation, or both, I would have to guess. I just say it because it's general good practice, and plus, people might sometimes associate "extract" beer flavor with what are actually contamination problems based on beginning brewers using a lot of extract and not quite having the sanitation thing down pat yet.
Topic: "Extracty" all grain flavor (Read 3043 times)
