bottled first batch.

It is a Irish red ale. I definitely came up short. I didn't take in to account about losing water while boiling. I had it in the primary for 10 days. The secondary for 12 days. Now I will bottle for 2-3 weeks. I ended up with 43 beers. So I drank one. It tasted pretty bad. I wasn't expecting it to taste all that great. So hopefully it will be a 400% improvement after bottled for 2-3 weeks.

can you describe 'how' it tasted 'bad'? too bitter? too sweet? too dry? medicinal? clovey? bananas/juicy fruit gum? wet-cardboard? band-aid/plastic? sour?

It just tasted very bland. Which I think is due to it being flat. What it is carbonated , I think it will taste better.

I bottled mine about 9 days ago. I tried some at bottling... not so good. Tasted kinda bad actually, no hop aroma/flavor, kinda tatsed like **** to be honest.

Tasted again last night after about a week of bottle conditioning, it's 1000000x better. Tastes like it's going to be a decent beer! And I know I made a few mistakes in the brew process. So my advice is to keep the hopes up, but don't even bother trying it again for 10 days or so.

i bottled my irish red (also my first brew) last thursday and popped one open today...certainly needs aging, but it still tasted great. i don't mean to toot my own proverbial horn, but for a first brew, the color, clarity, head, and aroma were all great...the taste, while it needs more time, was still delish, made even moreso knowing that it will only get better.

Wow! So many of us doing Irish Red Ales. I bottled mine last Friday, and I've yet to try any of them. I've been pretty patient about it, especially since I'm drinking up my supply of commercial brews to make room in the fridge.

I do have to say, though, that I thought the sample I took at bottling tasted great! Hopefully that doesn't mean that it will get worse in the bottles. Within a few weeks we'll have a deluge of Irish Red pictures going up, so cheers!

Curious here...
Has anyone had a beer taste awesome before bottling (minus the need for carb) and it turn out crappy? Will storing the beer after bottling in a higher temp area cause the beer to take on a different character or just increase the potential for bottle bombs? Inquiring minds want to know.

I also bottled my first batch last night (Mr. Beer batch) so I tasted before bottling. This was a golden lager at about 15 days or so. Also tasted my second batch which was a red amber at about 13 days. Both had very mild flavors and a bit of thickness, definitely yeasty. Not bad, just not real strong beer flavors. I now have to be patient for the carbontating and conditioning for a while now.

julohan - sounds like my first batch a little over a month ago. Bought a couple of Irish red extract kits from morebeer.com when I bought my equipment. Boiled everything per the directions, ended up with a little over 4 1/4 gallons when I bottled it. O.G. was 1.056, F.G. was 1.006 so I figured I didn't screw it up real bad. I tasted one after it was in the bottle for about 2 weeks when I was getting ready to make the second batch of Irish red I bought, and it was still uber bitter. I'm hoping the bitterness mellows out with more time in the bottle. Like everything else in life, there's always a learning curve. You've gotta crawl before you can walk.

So you are thinking because of water loss could cause the taste?

Julohan said:

So you are thinking because of water loss could cause the taste?

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I really don't know. I'm just a beginner at this sport. The bitterness in my beer could be from the amount of hops they gave me with the kits I bought, which was 2 oz of sterling for bitterness (boiled for the full hour) and the 2 oz of willamet for aroma (added for the last ~1 1/2 minutes of the boil) combined with the liquid loss due to vigorous boil (insert learning curve here ).

I did a few things different on my second Irish red kit I made a few weeks ago. I cut the hops in half for both the bittering and aroma, and I also didn't boil as vigorously and eneded up with about 5 1/2 gallons in the primary. So only time will tell with this last batch.