Bottled second batch.... Craptastic!

My first, despite adding frozen strawberries to the hot wort, and then losing about a gallon of beer to the half fermented loose berries and having little pieces of the stuff in my beer, I'm happy with the 34 beers I got out of the batch... they taste really good, and the coloring is great.

My second batch, made off a recipe I got on beertools called "Sexy Momma Cream Ale", tastes terrible so far, though it still needs to carbonate. I can't see it aging and becoming a decent beer.

There's a lb of lactose and half a lb. of malto dextrin, I added honey to the mix, I left out the vanilla bean. It tastes really sweet in an unpleasant way. It barely fermented from 1.52 to 1.26. And thanks to Florida temps, I know understand the phrase "fruity esters." No detectable hops.

I've got a honey maple mead in the fermenter right now, and when I move that to the secondary, I'll start that caramel cream ale I see listed on here...

Any tips? Don't want to waste more money, as this last beer looks like it's going to really really suck. And one thing I see already: I received my ingredients a week ago, I had them crack the grains. Do I need to put them in the fridge for now? Can I steep them now, drop them back in a boil later?

My tip is to learn to make normal beer before doing the experiments.
Do something that you know will turn out okay and you can learn with.
Well done on the first batch.

orfy said:

My tip is to learn to make normal beer before doing the experiments.
Do something that you know will turn out okay and you can learn with.
Well done on the first batch.

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Only changes I made to the recipe were the honey and the vanilla bean. I plan to make no changes to the caramel cream ale recipe.

Oddly enough, I tasted it one day after bottling, and it was different... I also mixed it with some bud light I had laying around, and even stranger, the mix wasn't bad. I'd hate to have to buy bud light to mix with it, though.

drmojo said:

Only changes I made to the recipe were the honey and the vanilla bean. I plan to make no changes to the caramel cream ale recipe.

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I think what he meant was to make some straight-forward, more conventional brews with which you can master the process and easily assess your results.

Sexy Mama Cream Ale may be a spectacular brew (it sounds dreadful to me, but that's beside the point), but since it's not really a conventional type of beer, how will you even know if it came out like it was supposed to?

OTOH, if you brewed a simple all-malt amber ale, English brown ale, or hefeweizen* or something like that, you'll simnplify the process some, and it'll be very easy to compare your outcome with a known style.

IMHO, the main purpose of the first couple batches is to learn and get comfortable with the process.

EDIT: About the cracked grains: they're fine for a week or three in a cool dry place. Or best yet, put them in the freezer (in a well-sealed bag, so they don't pick up moisture.)

(*I would normally say pale ale, but I see that your tastes are more to the less hoppy styles)

2 pounds of unfermentable sugar sounds like a lot. That would become a cloyingly sweet drink.

EDIT: Don't be too surprised if it does turn out good. Green beers (young, unaged) typically taste terrible until they're in the bottle for a few months. Don't dump it for at least 6 months.

Orfy's got it right. Think of it like cooking. No one starts out making the fancy Food Network dishes. You get a base knowledge of your basic brew genres. Once those are borderline perfected, add a pinch of something here, dash of something there. All of your brews must start with a base. Hell, even I've given up making specialty brews for a bit. Thought I had it, and that was my mistake...thinking. TOTALLY tanked a Sam Adams Winter Lager clone...went back to the basics. Trust me, once you sample a few of your basic results, you won't care that it's not a specialty brew. Rome wasn't built in a day, and Sam Adams' first brew was the basic Lager...all good things to those who wait...ok, I'm out of platitudes...:cross:

Cheesefood said:

2 pounds of unfermentable sugar sounds like a lot. That would become a cloyingly sweet drink.

EDIT: Don't be too surprised if it does turn out good. Green beers (young, unaged) typically taste terrible until they're in the bottle for a few months. Don't dump it for at least 6 months.

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Agreed, it's amazing how much the flavor of a beer will change even in a single week, much less over a few months. Don't dump it until it's had a few months in the bottle and you still can't choke it down.

Actually, your fermentation wasn't too bad. 14 points of the final gravity is the lactose and MD. Way too much lactose IMHO. Even in a high gravity milk stout, I've never used more than 8 oz. I don't use honey much, except in mead. Honey malt tastes better.

I'm a firm believer in doing clone kits to start. That way you'll know exactly what the finished product should taste like. Sometimes the kits are so good (like austinhomebrews Rogue Mocha Porter), that you don't need to experiment further.

I'll echo...echo...echo....the sentiment.

Be patient with your current brew.
Get planning your next brew.
KISS... :cross:

Thanks for the encouragement. I'll keep it around for a while, just to be sure... Should I put it in the fridge to wait for improvement? Since temps stay in the 75-80 range even in winter in Florida, would the fridge approach slow me down too much?