First Batch tastes.... odd

I made a chocolate cherry stout for my first try and everything went smoothly. I tasted some during bottling and beside not being carbonated it tasted great.

I tried a bottle last night after having sat in the bottle for over 2 weeks. It tastes nothing like during bottling. The cherry taste is completely overpowering, and instead of tasting sweet like at bottling, its really really strong and a little sour.

What made the cherry taste change and will it mellow out eventually?

how did you add cherry flavor?

with actual cherries or with extract? What else did you use for ingredients?

First thought is if you used real cherries and you did not effectively pasteurize them you have some lactobaccilus (sp?) acid souring going on. Lambic stout?

I was following a recipe I got offline.

It said to a pack of thawed frozen cherries to the wort at the last 10 minutes. Then to leave the cherries in the primary with the beer for the first stage, then to just leave them in the primary when I racked to the secondary.

So the frozen cherries were thawed, and then put in boiling wort for almost 10 minutes. Then left to sit in the beer for about a week.

The funny thing is that I tasted the beer during bottling and it tasted great. The cherry was just a subtle hint of flavor. But now after "mellowing" in the bottle for almost 3 weeks the taste is sour and overpowering.

Rendar said:

I was following a recipe I got offline.

It said to a pack of thawed frozen cherries to the wort at the last 10 minutes. Then to leave the cherries in the primary with the beer for the first stage, then to just leave them in the primary when I racked to the secondary.

So the frozen cherries were thawed, and then put in boiling wort for almost 10 minutes. Then left to sit in the beer for about a week.

The funny thing is that I tasted the beer during bottling and it tasted great. The cherry was just a subtle hint of flavor. But now after "mellowing" in the bottle for almost 3 weeks the taste is sour and overpowering.

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I used the exact same method for a blackberry wheat. At bottling it was all blackberry but at 2 weeks the fruit flavor has mellowed and it's starting to balance out. It sounds like my results are opposite of yours but damned if I can explain why.

1fastdoc said:

I used the exact same method for a blackberry wheat. At bottling it was all blackberry but at 2 weeks the fruit flavor has mellowed and it's starting to balance out. It sounds like my results are opposite of yours but damned if I can explain why.

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How many #'s of blackberries did you put into your blackberry wheat and what did you use for hops?

I have found that with any of my fruit flavored beers, wheat or other, that the flavor really mellows out with age. Had a cherry stout that was overpowered with cherry, undercarbonated, and just plain harsh. I let it set for another month and it turned out great. Couldn't keep any around because friends "had to have it". Time cures many things!!!!

Cherry's a really strong flavor, so I wouldn't worry too much about it being infected. The flavor profile's also going to change as the beer carbonates.

BUT - it really shouldn't have tasted very sweet at bottling, unless you added a lot of lactose or other unfermentable sugars. Sweetness = sugars = your beer might not have been done fermenting when you bottled it. Did you take a gravity reading at the time? If the beer WASN'T done fermenting, as the yeast continued their job in the bottle, the sweetness is going away, being replaced by alcohol and unfortunately lots and lots of CO2.

So, if you DIDN'T take a gravity reading (and that reading wasn't reasonably low), I'd suspect you're tasting the difference between partially-fermented beer and more-fermented beer. If that's the case, you've got to be careful with those bottles, as they might become overcarbonated and could be dangerous.

First things first though, before panicing; did you take a gravity reading when you bottled, and what was it?

My OG was about 1.056 and my FG was somewhere around 1.018

Which according to the recipe is just about dead on. Im pretty sure my problem is not that it was not finished fermenting, as it has been in the bottles for almost 3 weeks now and while it is carbonating, its just enough to get the pop and tiny bit of a head on the beer.

Perhaps all this beer needs is more time. The only thing that worried me is the fruity taste right now is not so much just a really strong cherry taste, but more like "Omg theres a rotting sour basket of fruit in my beer" taste. And like I said, at bottling the cherry taste was just barely noticeable. So it seems the cherry taste is growing with age, not mellowing.