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nschuster81

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Hi Everyone,

About a month ago I started brewing beer again after taking a few years off. I had previously brewed 2 batches before I had to take a break from the hobby.

To start back up I picked up an American Pale Ale kit from Weak Knee Homebrew in Pottstown, PA. I can post the specifics of the recipe later if that would help.

I left the wort in the glass carboy fermeter for two weeks before bottling and it has been in the bottle for about 3 weeks. I have taken a bottle and tasted it about once a week. After the first week the beer had a strong sweetness to it which I figured was just the 'greenness' of it. The second week the sweet flavor diminished a bit, and trying it again last night I noticed little to no difference in the flavor from the week before. Aside from the sweet taste there is little to no hop flavor in the beer.

The beer is still drinkable, which is a good thing, just not tasting as good as I had hoped or expected.

The one thing that I look back on and know I should have done differently was that I tied the hop and barley bags pretty tight which reduced their surface area and probably the infusion into the wort.

Am I stuck with a sweet, flavorless beer or is there hope that after a few more weeks in the bottle things might get better?

I am already itching to brew again and hopefully improve over this batch so I guess that is one good thing to come out of this rebirth into homebrewing.

Thanks,
Nate
 
Give it a couple more weeks and see if the flavor doesn't finally "pop." Some beers can take 6 weeks or so to truly develop.

The tightness of your hop back really means nothing. I think you're still just green and looking for something else to blame, when it's just pre-mature.

SOmeone posted this on facebook yesterday, it's pretty much what I've been saying for years. The 5 bottle rule.
 
I dig that 5 bottle rule. Only have two left from my first batch but two is better than 0.
 
+1 on the 5 bottle rule. A variation on the same is the always to soon rule: the best beer in any batch is invariably the last. That's not always true, but it usually is. If a beer isn't rating so great, forget about it for awhile and t try it again in a month or 2.

"I saw a wino eating grapes. I was like, dude! You got to wait!"- Mitch Hedberg
 
Only 2 weeks in the fermenter? Did you take any hydrometer readings? It may not have been finished fermenting yet.
 
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