Third Batch - with photos!!

I made an Irish Red Ale. The IRA for St. Patricks Day. I think I got my carbonation to finally work. I'm even getting nice lacing on the glass.

Now, I'm not too sure I'm happy with this beer. Not sure how to explain it. It's kinda tart. It has an IBU of 25, and I don't like to go past the teens (I know! Don't tease me!) so I'm not sure if that's it.

I'll just have to drink more to decide if I like it or not.




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Good looking beer! Calling it the IRA on St. Paddy's day is a little harsh though

Regarding the tartness, I've noticed that my first two brews had this one particular flavor to them that I was not too pleased with. The flavor seemed to be the same in both batches (a brown ale and an Irish stout) and I am leaning towards it being attributed to chlorine/chloramine in my water (I got campden tablets for my third batch ). However, I noticed with my first batch that after a couple weeks this flavor went away and it ended up being a really really good beer! I say give it a little time and see how you like it. Don't do like I did and keep drinking them just to make sure you still don't like it...

Yeah, I thought it might be a bit much. Sorry.

I looked up off flavors, and these a green apple one. The beer is still too green, and needs to condition more, according to john Palmer. That makes sense as I was exactly 14 days since bottling. It should mellow out. At least according to my reading.

The water in my area sucks. For this batch, I bought five gallons of spring water. I want to see how that will affect things.


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osoling said:

The water in my area sucks. For this batch, I bought five gallons of spring water. I want to see how that will affect things.
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Using spring water is OK, but problem is you don't know what is in the spring water either...is it high or low in the needed minerals? Better off using R/O or distilled water and using a water calculator to figure out what you need to add to the water based on the recipe you are making.

I still wanna know if this was an extract batch or not. Guessing not, and if PM or AG, curious to ur mash temp? I had this happen on a couple brews when first started prior to really controlling my mash temps (were too low).

White Dog Brewery

Actually, it was an extract brew. I might go mash in the future but this is only third batch!!!

Good advice about spring versus distilled. I wondered about that when I bought it. I need to learn more about conditioning the water. Maybe on my 4th batch.


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I usually use a mix of filtered R/O water and spring water. My water tastes bad too but I need the other stuff that's in there so the mix sort of gives me that and it seems to work well.

If your beer has only been in the bottle for 14 days then chances are it needs more time to condition. It's a good looking brew though! Makes me thirsty!!