Smell Translate to Taste?

Almost 72 hours into fermentation of my virgin batch (Irish Red) and the smell is amazing, Im glad my setup is tucked away in the basement behind the man-cave because if anyone saw me smelling buckets 47 times a day they would think I were crazy.

My question is should/will the beer taste similar to the smell I have now? If so, might be the best tasting beer ever as I have never smelled such a good beer.

If not it might just be the Acqua Di Gio of homebrews.

Im at the same point as you, opened mine up for the first time last night. Great smell. Im hoping so!

I did not open mine up, why did you so early? The guys here say dont touch it for at least 10 days. I just have a nice strong smell around my bucket and airlock. Airlock has been going crazy for past few days, starting to slow a bit now.

Also I see the head/crausen never really rose too much. I was all set with a blowoff tube and have had minimal rise, is that due to the type of brew or what?

The smell now is not necessarily the best indicator of what you will get later. Example, some of the really sulfury yeasts often have people in a panic at this point, but it fades and that taste is not noticeable in the beer. What it tastes like going into the keg/bottle is a little closer, but still not perfect. I've never had a good tasting beer going into the keg turn out to be bad with a little aging, but I've had several unspectacular tasting beers turn out completely different after a little keg time.

I agree with shooter - I wouldn't say that smell translates very well to taste. There might be a little bit of crossover but nothing to put money on.

I'm an airlock sniffer myself...:cross:

To answer your question usually if it smells good then it's gonna taste good....

Eman24dx said:

I did not open mine up, why did you so early? The guys here say dont touch it for at least 10 days. I just have a nice strong smell around my bucket and airlock. Airlock has been going crazy for past few days, starting to slow a bit now.

Also I see the head/crausen never really rose too much. I was all set with a blowoff tube and have had minimal rise, is that due to the type of brew or what?

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Dont worry about amount of krausen. Most of my brews upon opening the bucket to package (bottle, keg, drink ) have only a 1 inch ring of krausen. I have only had one blowoff in the time I have been brewing, and they all turned out well enough. Except for my Octoberfests, but that is because I didnt even consider it is a lager and temperature control was not considered much at all.

I opened mine out of curiosity. Then quickly closed it. Doubt anything bad happened

RIC0 said:

I'm an airlock sniffer myself...:cross:

To answer your question usually if it smells good then it's gonna taste good....

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Agreed! But if it smells bad it doesn't mean the beer will taste bad. Some yeasts produce sulfurous smells while fermenting.

If it smells like rotten meat you should not have tried to emulate the brewer on that Buffalo Wild Wing commercial.

Well now 5 days in primary the vigorous bubbling has come to a stand still, done bubbling and my wonderful smell is now gone. I guess I must have had a pretty fast fermentation. I know most here say to just leave it be for a few weeks so is there any reason to open the bucket to take a reading or just leave it alone for another week or so?

I know "There's nothing wrong with leaving it in there for 3 weeks" but at the same time if its done isn't it done? Thoughts?