Big Alcohol Aftertaste

After three weeks in the bottle, my Octane IPA from Midwest has a pretty strong "alcohol"aftertaste. It is not undrinkable but the aftertaste really distracts from the flavor. The SG was 066 and finished at 013. Will this mellow with more time or am I stuck with what tastes like a good beer until the aftertaste?

It will mellow just give it time. My Wheat beer had a bad alcohol after taste weeks 2 and 3, then week 4 it was gone completely.

Good to know... thanks

Try it again in another three weeks. Unless it fermented too hot, the flavors should have mellowed by then.

tbone said:

After three weeks in the bottle, my Octane IPA from Midwest has a pretty strong "alcohol"aftertaste. It is not undrinkable but the aftertaste really distracts from the flavor. The SG was 066 and finished at 013. Will this mellow with more time or am I stuck with what tastes like a good beer until the aftertaste?

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I have a Raspberry Wheat (OG 1.062, FG 1.012) that's been in bottles for a little over 2 weeks and it's the same way. I generally sample one 3-4 days after bottling to see how the flavor is - had great flavor then.

I waited a week and put two in the fridge overnight... BIG alcohol taste. So much so that I couldn't really drink it as I'm strictly a beer guy and hate the taste of almost all wine and liquor. I've got one of them in the fridge now that I'm going to pop here in a few minutes. Hopefully the strong alcohol on the tail end of it has mellowed a considerably. I'll try to remember to update this post after I've had one later.

*EDIT - Yup, I just sampled and the strong alcohol finish is all but gone. Damn fine brew if I do say so myself.

Thanks everyone. As ohio said, the taste was not there when sampling at bottling time. The wait will be easier for me since I will be out of town for a couple of weeks. I love IPA and am looking forward to this brew.

Is it a disagreeable alcohol flavor, or just extra-strong regular-beer flavor? Would you describe it as solvent-like? Like acetone or lacquer thinner? Rose, bitter, chemical taste? If any of these, you may have other alcohol types in there than the alcohol usually found in beer (ethanol).

I have Dr. Lee Janson's book called Brew Chem 101, and in its section on identifying and avoiding off-flavors this is specifically mentioned. There are many combinations of alcohol molecules, many are produced during the fermentation process and subsequently used up again (broken back down into ethanol and more beer tastes). To quote the book a bit:

Fermentation that's too fast or too strong or uses the wrong starting material (say, amino acids instead of sugars) can overload the normal ethanol-producing pathway, resulting in undesired products.

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Bottom line, to avoid these other alcohols from being formed, he says to choose the yeast strain carefully for the recipe (probably not your problem since you're using a kit), control amino acid content by proper recipe formulation (once again, you're using a kit), maintain sterile brewing conditions and control fermentation temperatures. So as long as you sanitized well, the most likely cause of other alcohols is too high fermentation temps.

I'm the type of geek who likes to dig down to the root of the problem and understand what exactly went wrong, so I can avoid it next time. Hopefully this info helps you make better beer next time if it applies to you.

The highest that my fermentation temp. got was 70 degrees. Most of the time it was in the 60s. If you ever had a Dogfish Head 90 Min IPA, it taste like the Dogfish aftertaste except 10 times over. It is sort of like drinking a boilermaker - shot of wiskey in the beer. That is the best way that I can describe it.