Another "my beer tastes like green apple" question

I'm six brews into my brewing career so far, the first two were extract and the next four have been all-grain. The two extract brews came out great. The first all-grain beer was undercarbed and had a slight green apple taste. Over time the carbonation hasn't gotten better, it's been six weeks now and the green apple taste is about the same. I just chalked it up to beginners mistakes.

But I just tried my second all-grain brew and it had no carbonation at all after two weeks and tasted like green apple beer, like unbearably sour. I know two weeks is early but it was carbing in a heated igloo cooler at around 74 degrees. I should also note that both of these beers tasted fine before they went into the bottles. I swirled up the yeast in the bottles to maybe get them to come back to life again. We'll try the results again in another week or two. My question is can that much sourness come from the standard corn sugar not being consumed by the yeast for some reason? I doubt it. Or is it more likely infected? I don't know how it could happen considering I had no sanitation issues with the first two extract batches.

How did you make the decision it was time to bottle? Can you take us through the process you are going through on bottling day?

Green apple is an off flavor associated with acetaldehyde which is typically present in young beer that has not fully conditioned. Since this began with your foray into AG brewing we will need to know your process.

Not so much the recipe but more having to to do with OG, FG, time and temp in fermenter and bottling process.

Give us some more details and we can try to pin down what's going on.

It was an attempt at a strong scotch ale. The OG was 1.074. I left it at room temperature (72 degrees) until the airlock started to bubble and then moved to my basement (64 degrees). It sat in the primary for a few days shy of 4 weeks. The FG was 1.020.

I brew 2.5 gallon batches, used Palmer's equation to carb for 2.5 co2 volumes, came up with 2.38 oz of priming sugar. I poured the sugar solution into my bottling bucket which has been sprayed down with star san and racked from the fermenter into the bottling bucket on top of the sugar solution. This is done with a racking cane that has sat in the bucket of star san and had a gallon or so of it run through it and the tubing.

Then I use a sanitized bottle filler attached to the spigot and fill my bottles that have been submerged and rinsed with star san and drained for several hours on a bottle tree. Capped with sanitized bottle caps of course.

Best practice is to pitch the yeast at or below the temp you want to ferment at. If you are finishing at 1.02 you are most likely mashing at too high of a temp. What was you target fg?

Ok, cool, your process is spot on from what I can tell. The only thing I can see is that at 1.07+ you brewed a big beer.

The bigger the beer the longer they take to properly condition, while a beer like this may carb up in a couple weeks they may take 6-8 weeks or more to properly condition or longer.

It appears that you will just need to be a little more patient, put the bottles somewhere out of site and forget about them for a few more weeks then try one.

I would make sure you are pitching adequate yeast also.

Are you tasting the acetaldehyde in the beer PRIOR to bottling, or just after bottling?

Looks like we need you to go back to the process when you start you mash times and temps.

I used WLP028 so at an attenuation of 75% (the high end of their spec) it should have fermented from 1.074 to 1.025. Looking back at my notes the temperature I wrote down when I measured the OG was 80 deg. Pretty high .

My target mash temperature was 152 degrees for 60mins. I believe it was more like 154 degrees. However, I recently checked my thermometer and in ice water it read 32deg but in boiling water it was only 206-207deg. I'm wondering if I need to compensate when heating my strike water.

The taste is after bottling though. In both beers there was no indication of the acetaldehyde when I took my FG reading prior to bottling. And the current beer tastes like I was trying to brew apple flavored beer, it's not a slight aftertaste like it was with the first AG batch.

I go back to my original post/reply, it needs more conditioning time

duboman said:

Green apple is an off flavor associated with acetaldehyde which is typically present in young beer that has not fully conditioned. Since this began with your foray into AG brewing we will need to know your process.

Not so much the recipe but more having to to do with OG, FG, time and temp in fermenter and bottling process.

Give us some more details and we can try to pin down what's going on.

Click to expand...

So the sour comment is a concern as well.
Is there a vinegar flavor at all to it?

Not really vinegar. Just really strong apple. Like taking a bite out of a granny smith. I swirled up the yeast to hopefully get it making some more CO2. I'll give it more time, lots more time. Still, after two weeks I thought it would be at least a tiny bit carbonated, but it was as flat as can be. I guess we'll see in a couple more weeks.

Yeah, I have Palmer's book and looked at that section. I was just really surprised by the flavor of this beer. I'll chalk it up to not enough experience and let the beer sit for a couple more weeks. Thanks guys.

Sounds like a young beer to me too. The sourness mention made me concerned about infection, but it seems not. Forget about them for another month. Big beers need a LONG time to condition.

One thing about sanitation: Your bottling bucket needs to have the spigot completely disassembled and cleaned, then sanitized before every use. Then after every use it needs to be completely disassembled and at least cleaned and sprayed with sanitizer before storage.