Change in flavor over time

On the advice of a few people I've tasted my first beer at various stages of the brewing process to get an idea for how it changes. By the time I bottled (after 3 weeks in the primary - this was a very simple extract amber ale), the taste had changed from very sweet to...well, beer! I'm curious if the "sharp" flavor will go away after a few weeks in the bottle though. It tastes like beer but has a serious bite to it. Not a hoppy bite, just a bite. It's kind of hard to describe except that way.

Is that normal for a beer after it's out of the primary?

Yep, that's green beer. Let it age for several weeks and you will see a noticeable improvement.

What ^he said!

Green beer doesn't taste very good. Your beer will improve a lot in a couple weeks and even more after a month or two. Make sure to save a few to try over the next few months.

Time is your friend. Typically the longer you wait, the better it gets. Nothing abnormal from your tastings yet.

So what's the story with beer then? I can't tell you how many times I've been told by people that beer (commercial) starts to go bad after a few months. Is that just bogus, or when does beer start to go downhill? I imagine the alcohol content makes a difference.

I'm conditioning in the bottles at around 65 degrees right now. I figured I'd give it a few weeks before cracking open the first bottle. Should I leave it at that temperature for a few months (assuming it lasts that long), or should I move it to the basement after a few weeks where it's probably a good 10 degrees colder?

Commercial beers might be bottle-conditioned or aged in advance of being sold (in the case of craft ales). Also, the bigger a beer is, the more it benefits from aging - in general. Most American commercial beer is light lager - not as conducive to bettering over time. It would be nice if there was a graph with time on the horizontal axis, subjective quality on the vertical axis, and multiple curves showing different styles and their development...

green beer grasshopper... you'll learn that time is your friend. that beer will be so different in a few weeks or even months!!!

skelrad said:

So what's the story with beer then? I can't tell you how many times I've been told by people that beer (commercial) starts to go bad after a few months. Is that just bogus, or when does beer start to go downhill? I imagine the alcohol content makes a difference.

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It's because most commercial beers are homogenized and are basically dead in the bottle. There isn't any yeast or anything else acting on the beer that will help it age over time. And in fact, a lot of beer sits around on store shelves, isn't stored properly, is exposed to a lot of UV light and over time it can actually break down and deteriorate.

The opposite is true for many "live" beers that are bottle conditioned. Here you have yeast still alive and kicking in the bottle and you haven't gone through any processes that killed anything and everything in the bottle that prevent further aging. And in fact, this can actually help the flavors mature and develop further.

That doesn't mean all beer gets better with age though. Some beers are best young, whether home brewed or commercial. And some beers that use a lot of hop flavor and aroma begin to lose some of that punch over time.

There are a couple difference between your live beer and the dead, filtered commercial beer.

First of course is the live yeast and second it hasn't traveled half way across country in hot/cold warehouses and trucks. The main thing to remember is the "born on" date thing was just something that an advertising person made up to be a big deal. It was just a marketing gimmick that has hung around.

Every beer has a life cycle. There is a maturing phase, a "best time to drink" phase, and an inevitable decline to "damn, I shoulda drank that last month". Commercial breweries are typically tweaking that cycle to get their beer to market in the shortest time possible. Now, maybe by volume, all the derogatory statements about "most commercial" beer above are true, but, if we limit our scope to the craft beer industry, you will find a healthy mix of beers that are at their peak in 3-4 weeks, and some that benefit for months, or even years of aging.
It is all complicated and wonderful. Just keep at it and you will pick it up over time. In the meantime, take comfort in the knowledge that most homebrew is in that peak in the 4-8 week range, and a 5 gal batch is usually gone well before the end.
Save a bottle or two for many months after most of the batch is gone and see what happens. I always say I should, but never actually do

+1 germey I thought my 2 gal of cider was awful @ 2 months in but by 6 months it was incredible! This year I did 5 gal and I'm not touching it until june!