odd "mouth feel"

I'm not sure I'm using the right terminology here so bear with me. I'm tasting my first brew after being bottled for 10 days. I'm really pleased with the beer, especially so because I had fairly low expectations during fermentation. The carbonation & head retention are good & very close to most commercial beers. But I'm getting an odd mouth feel aftertaste. I want to use the word astringent, but I'm not sure that is what it is. I would compare it to biting an unripe persimmon but to a much lesser degree. After each swallow It feels like there is a dry film on my tongue and teeth, which fades after about 30 seconds. I don't know if its because the beer is still young & its the bitter of the hops or if there was something wrong with my brew. I did not get this same feeling while sampling during the fermentation process.

The recipe:
4 lb. Alexanders Pale malt extract, 3 lb. Light dried malt extract, 16 oz. Caramel 60, 1 oz. Tettnang (60min), 1oz Tettnang (15min) .5 oz. Willamette (5mins) pellet hops, 1 tsp. Irish moss. Wyeast 1056 american ale


My process:
brand new brew kit cleaned with "easy clean" no rise.
Aluminum Turkey fryer also cleaned with easy clean but rinsed really well.
The aluminum pot has been used several times to fry turkey & cook crawfish, plus I have boiled a full 7 gals of water prior to brewing. The kettle does not have a "black oxide layer" that I keep hearing about.
Steeped grains in 4.5gals of water for 30 mins at exactly 155
added all of the LME & DME, stirr & bring to rolling boil
added 1st hop addition & set timer
added 2nd hop addition & irish moss
added aroma hops
let wort cool for about 5 mins, then added ice to top to 5gals
chilled wort to 80degrees in about 20 mins using ice bath
moved to fermenter & pitched yeast & about 78 degrees
the yeast fermented fast & furious for 24hrs at 75degrees, then I dropped the temp to 66.
beer finished at 1.051 ( did not take an OG)
Primary for 7 days, secondary for another 7
Bottles were cleaned with PBW, then sanitized in Star San, rinsed in dishwasher & sanitized again using the dishwashers "Sani-clean" & heated dry. No detergent nor soap was used on bottles.
I spilled about 2oz of my 5oz's of priming sugar so when I made my simple syrup I added 1oz of table sugar.
added priming syrup to bottling bucket & transferred wort to bucket being careful to not oxygenate.
Bottled, waited a week to test & here we are.

wgonfan said:

....I'm tasting my first brew after being bottled for 10 days.

Click to expand...

This is ALL we needed to know....

Walk away from your beers for AT LEAST another 11 days. It's too soon to discern anything about your beer yet.

The 3 weeks at 70 degrees, 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 just because a beer is carbed doesn't mean it still doesn't taste like a$$ and need more time for the off flavors to condition out.

You have green beer.

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

You may think so.....but your beer's not ready yet.....Give it more itme and you'll never remember this issue....,it will be gone.

I know the beer isn't ready... I mention that in my original post. I've seen the videos, I've read the post. Isn't one of the great parts of homebrewing being able to taste you beers at various levels of maturity? Infact, one book I read suggest tasting you beer often & keeping notes along the way.

mostly I was curious if this is typical or a sign of a brewing mistake or if it is to be expected at this stage (which you say it is, by basically saying to expect anything at this stage). I'm brewing a 3rd batch this weekend so If there any thing in my process that caused this then I would like to know before hand.

Your response was very helpful. Thanks.

Like I said, if you think somethings wrong AND you know you're tasting it early, then your "worry" is fruitless.....We don't tell you this stuff to jerk your chain, to deprive you of your first batches of beer.

We tell you this because it's the truth...if something's not right about your beer and you haven't passed the minimum "window of greeness" then you don't even know if you have a "problem" or not. 99.999999999% of the time, especially for a new brewer starting one of these threads, it's NOT a problem.

Personally I think it's a waste of beer to sample early, but DEFINITELY A WASTE OF ENERGY TO BE CONCERNED ABOUT ANYTHING THING I DETECT IF I KNOW IT'S EARLY!!!!!

I just never had gleaned anything substantive from that. Despite the rationalization that many new brewer say is for 'educational purposes' I find there's very little to be gleaned tasting a beer at 1 week, and again at 2....that to me just means there 2 less beers that are actually tasting good and are ready at the end. I don't buy budweiser because I don't like to taste "bad" beer. So why would I drink my own beer when it was "bad" especially since I know it's going to be delicious a few weeks later.

It's a great rationalization, and I hear it every time I make my assertion. But the thing to remember is that since every beer is different that 5 day old Ipa you may have decided to crack open is not going to taste anything like that 5 day old brown ale you opened early in your next batch. They're two different animals. There are so many tiny variations in things like ambient temp at fermentation and carbonation, pitch count phases of the moon, that even if you brewed your same batch again and cracked a bottle at the exact same early time on the previous batch, the beer, if you could remember how it tasted, more than likely wouldn't taste the same at that phase....Heck even in the same batch if you had grabbed a different bottle it may seem carbed or tasting differently at that point.

A tiny difference in temps between bottles in storage can affect the yeasties, speed them up or slow them down. Like if you store them in a closet against a warm wall, the beers closest to the heat source may be a tad warmer than those further way, so thy may carb/condition at slightly different rates. I usually store a batch in 2 seperate locations in my loft 1 case in my bedroom which is a little warmer, and the other in the closet in the lving room, which being in a larger space is a tad cooler, at least according to the thermostat next to that closet. It can be 5-10 degrees warmer in my bedroom. So I usually start with that case at three weeks. Giving the other half a little more time. Each one is it's own little microcosm, and although generally the should come up at the same time, it's not an automatic switch, and they all pop on. They are all going to come to tempo when their time is right...not a minute before, and then at some point they all will be done.

So you're not, to me learning anything special from it. But It's your beer, but there's not gonna be anything right or wrong at that point, except that you're out a beer that 2-3 weeks later you're gonna post something like"Sigh, they always say that last beer of the batch is the best, now if only I hadn't "sampled for educational purposes" all those weeks back I could be having another on of these delicious beers."

It[s your beer if you want to cheat fine...but expect it to be drinkable yet.

If our beers were ready at 10 days, do you think we would incessently be advsinig you all to wait??? New brewers often want answers to their questions, but USUALLY in cases like these, there are no questions to begin with. There's usually nothing wrong with the beer....only with the brewers.....And it's called impatience.

And if there is truly something wrong, we can't discern that until we know the beer's simply not green. Do you understand? We have to rule out noobish impatience before we can tell anything else.

And 99.99999999% of the time, we never need too.....the beer is fine when the time is right.

Your post contradicts in at least 4 ways 100,000 post, books & such that I have previously read. I know you are an old timer on here and have 18million more brews on under your belt than I do under mine. I mean 35k post must mean that you know something. So I'll take your advice & not test my beer during it maturation process.... Although I think it was one of your post that suggest brewing the same recipe multiple times to hone ones skills & get a consistent brew??? I would think testing & quality control (so to speak) would be an important part of the consistency equation.


Your wisdom & knowledge is greatly appreciated & I'm 100% certain that everything you are saying runs true, but your delivery just comes off wrong. I may be a new brewer, but I am not uneducated (experiences like yours weighs way more than education) nor ignorant. You should not approach every "1st brew" post as a lack of patience or n00b brewer. Revvy , though doesn't care about new brewers... He's among the elitist. news flash guys... Elitism kills hobbies/sport's growth. new comers do not like the elitist attitude.


Revvy, I appreciate your comments & will heed you advice. I know wisdom when I see it; even if the delivery skews a bit on the ass-hol-ish side.

"Revvy, I appreciate your comments & will heed you advice. I know wisdom when I see it; even if the delivery skews a bit on the ass-hol-ish side."

trust in revvy i'm sure the delivery comes from answering the same questions over and over and over and over and over and over 35k times

I don't have many brews or posts to my name (yet). Like you, I *do* taste my beers over the course of their maturation process for now. Once I understand the subtlety of my beer's journey, I'll probably save them all for when I /know/ them to be at their best. I do so because I want to see the journey; it's all still new and exciting to me. However, I listen to that advice and I don't judge or freak out about it not tasting right because I know it's still green.

Trust in the sage advice of RDWHAHB. It'll work out.

So not to jump on anyone's toes, but my favorite reference (because it's the first in a google search) for off flavors is this:
http://morebeer.com/content/homebrew-off-flavors
Since you were careful with the temps for steeping, you might have a bit of oxidation setting in. Toss another bottle in the fridge, let it balance (the co2) for a day or so and give it a taste test. If you detect more of the astringency or start tasting wet card board.. You now have an answer. Drink it all quick before it goes bad.
However if you extracted some tannins, the the flavor/mouth feel may reduce with time. But it could be green beer. I'd check another to make sure it's not oxidation.

I will say though my first three batches, I pulled samples weekly. Now I only sample monthly. Green beer can have too many varieties of flavors to really understand or detect anything in the process. It's the bigger beers that take longer to age that I think you can learn more from by tasting over many months.