Rookie mistake. Is it a goner?

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Fuzzywumpers

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I just tried a beer from a batch I bottled a couple of weeks ago and it tastes like my Homer bucket. Why? Because while I was collecting my first runnings, I thought it to be a good idea to collect it in my Home Depot homer bucket which I have calibrated to show me how much I have collected from my mash. This hot wort sat in the bucket for at least an hour while I heated up my sparge water and sparged into the same bucket (why? so I could see how much total wort I collected, of course). Apparently hot liquid gets the plastic going and the awesome Homer flavor went into my beer.

So the question of the day is SHOULD I DUMP THIS THING AND GO ON WITH MY LIFE? Or are the yeasties really that magical and can take away orange bucket flavor?

*Side note: I made two more batches using this method which I have not bottled yet. I tasted them this morning to see if they were affected as well. Tasted fine. WTF?
 
what stage is it in now ?

have you bottled it?
is it still in the fermenter ?

Where in the brewing process is this beer?

and what type of beer is it ?
 
pack it away.

the taste of homer should fade some over time !

and really I keep stuff like that around for the booze mooches. We all know one or 12 !!!
 
Thanks Cheeto. Looks like this sucker's going away for a while.

If it's not gone after a few months, I'll just go hand it out in the Home Depot parking lot.
 
If it tastes like the chemical found in a cheap home depot bucket, do you want to be drinking that, even if it doesn't taste as badly after a period of time? That chemical residue isn't going anywhere.

They made that bucket somewhere as cheaply as possible in order for it to be useful enough for holding liquid paint.
 
If it tastes like the chemical found in a cheap home depot bucket, do you want to be drinking that, even if it doesn't taste as badly after a period of time? That chemical residue isn't going anywhere.

They made that bucket somewhere as cheaply as possible in order for it to be useful enough for holding liquid paint.

I actually just thought about that before I read your post. Probably not.
 
I actually doubt that the off flavor is from the homer bucket. I transfer hot liquids into a similar cheap bucket for the same reason and have never had an issue. More than likely your only noob mistake is that your beer is green still and needs more time to mellow out. And has little if anything to do with what you think it is.

You gave me all the info I needed in your answer to Cheeto's question about how long it's been in the bottle.

The 3 weeks at 70 degrees, that that we recommend is the minimum time it takes for average gravity beers to carbonate and condition. Higher grav beers take longer.

Stouts and porters have taken me between 6 and 8 weeks to carb up..I have a 1.090 Belgian strong that took three months to carb up, and needed another 6 to lose the hot alcohol taste and mellow out.

Everything you need to know about carbing and conditioning, can be found here Of Patience and Bottle Conditioning. With emphasis on the word, "patience." ;)

Give it a few more weeks, and in the mean time read this thread, and wash the words "should I dump this?" out of your mouth with starsan or whatever sanitizer you are using. (That's your other noob mistake, considering dumping a beer before you are even past the minimum 3 weeks. Try thinking in terms of not even dumping it for 6 months, if in a couple weeks it's still funky.) ;)
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/ne...virtue-time-heals-all-things-even-beer-73254/
 
Revvy, I've read all of those posts. I made sure I did before I asked. But plastic? I can't imagine plastic flavor being due to a beer's greenness. But then again, I'm the greenhorn, so you would know better than I do. But plastic? i mean it literally tastes exactly like the homer bucket smells. It's like as if i ground up a homer bucket and made homer bucket tea out of it.
I would much rather wait it out than dump it. Believe me.
 
Revvy, I've read all of those posts. I made sure I did before I asked. But plastic? I can't imagine plastic flavor being due to a beer's greenness. But then again, I'm the greenhorn, so you would know better than I do. But plastic? i mean it literally tastes exactly like the homer bucket smells. It's like as if i ground up a homer bucket and made homer bucket tea out of it.
I would much rather wait it out than dump it. Believe me.

There's several "off flavors" that come out as "plasticky." And just about every "off flavor" has an equal manifestation as "greenness" that DOES mellow out, that's not truly the off flavor mentioned in palmer and other places..

But really you have to move past the "green" factor before you can truly judge anything. You have to pass that window, so that you can rule that out first.

Look at my bubblegum beer in the don't dump post, there are bubblegum off flavors that for all intents and purposes are NOT supposed to go away, yet mine did....so was the "off flavor" real, did the yeast go back and clear it up over time, or was even that green?

It's hard to tell...but the results can be amazing.

Just walk away from it for awhile, go brew another beer, and revisit it at another time.

You can't "do anything" to it now, you can't reopen the bottles, and some magic potent that will fix it. You have a 50% possibilty that it is a dumper...But right now, you'd be foolish to do so. Especially since you opened the damn thing up EARLY.....If you had waited another week, and it were goine, then you never would have known. That's why I don't even touch my beers til the 21st day, sometimes a month even. I KNOW there is nothing I can do now...so I might as well wait til the minimum time it takes before checking.
 
I feel deja vu reading this, especially since Revy was the one who made me get over the whole "i just bottled this a week ago and it tastes like crap" paranoia. I brewed a Belgian quad that tasted horrendous and wouldn't carb. ABV was 9 percent. I think it was around the 2 month mark that I was thinking of dumping it, and he convinced me that patience is a MUST and higher grav beers need to sit in a corner and be forgotten about. It's been about 8 months since that brew and I haven't touched one in about 2 months. It's fully carbed and tastes good. Not great yet but drinkable. Give it time and let it mature and chances are you'll be rewarded
 
i had a stout that tasted like pure plastic after carbing in the keg for two weeks, now, 3 months later its great with no hint of plastic. (only plastic it touched was a better bottle)
 
I WILL NEVER TRY ANOTHER BEER BEFORE 21 DAYS.


There. That's my pledge.

That's all I was looking for, some good advice.

Thanks guys.
 
I wouldn't say to never taste a beer before a certain point. I'd say to taste your brews at many points. Taste your mash, taste your fermentations, taste at bottling, taste after a week, two weks, three weeks. It shows you what your beer goes through and lets you know what to expect next time. The oatmeal stout I'm drinking right now tasted undrinkable at bottling but is (to me) unbelievable now, 3 weeks later. People will say it's a waste to drink a beer that you know isn't ready, but it teaches you the stages it goes through, then you'll know that if a beer tastes like $hit at bottling, it'll be fine in a month. That's my experience, and I'm far from a veteran. Hope that helps
 
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