First off, these are my first two brews ever and obviously my first time force carbonating. I've been reading these forums for a while but was unable to find a good answer to this question. If I missed a post somewhere feel free to link and I'll go away.
My soon to be kegerator (just a fridge at this point) arrived late and forced me to try to carb my beer faster than I would like since I have a BBQ in two days (this saturday). I have two kegs and no splitter at the moment so my plan was the 36 hour 30 PSI advice that I've seen on here.
It's been 48 hours now on keg 1 at 30 PSI as last night (at 36 hours) I went to check the levels and noticed that beer is considerably more bitter than before I started carbing and still tastes flat and almost flavorless, a dramatic drop from precarbing. I did some reading and searching and found some people stating that this flavor profile can develop with over carbing. I assume it's not over carbed as when I dispense it at around 10 psi I get a decent head and taste very little carbonation. No huge foam baths by any means. Dropping the pressure to 5 psi and dispensing is almost like pouring a glass of water as it has no head on it what so ever.
My question is this: is it possible to over carb a beer to develop this type of flavor profile yet the product not be carbonated? That just doesn't make sense to me from a newbie perspective but I'm at a loss as to explain why my beer is getting more bitter as time goes on. I fully and very thoroughly cleaned and sterilized both kegs when I got them so I'm sure it has nothing to do with the kegs. Both brews were sitting around for a few weeks in the keg and tasting them before carbing they tasted great.
For the time being I've disconnected the first keg and left 30 PSI in it. I thought about dropping it to serving levels of around 12 but since it still tastes flat I'm reluctant to do that. I've connected my other keg up and have it at 30 in the fridge as we speak but I'm fearing the same results.
Does anyone have suggestions? I'm stopping by my LHBS tomorrow to explain the situation to see if they have any additional advice but I thought I'd ask here first.
My soon to be kegerator (just a fridge at this point) arrived late and forced me to try to carb my beer faster than I would like since I have a BBQ in two days (this saturday). I have two kegs and no splitter at the moment so my plan was the 36 hour 30 PSI advice that I've seen on here.
It's been 48 hours now on keg 1 at 30 PSI as last night (at 36 hours) I went to check the levels and noticed that beer is considerably more bitter than before I started carbing and still tastes flat and almost flavorless, a dramatic drop from precarbing. I did some reading and searching and found some people stating that this flavor profile can develop with over carbing. I assume it's not over carbed as when I dispense it at around 10 psi I get a decent head and taste very little carbonation. No huge foam baths by any means. Dropping the pressure to 5 psi and dispensing is almost like pouring a glass of water as it has no head on it what so ever.
My question is this: is it possible to over carb a beer to develop this type of flavor profile yet the product not be carbonated? That just doesn't make sense to me from a newbie perspective but I'm at a loss as to explain why my beer is getting more bitter as time goes on. I fully and very thoroughly cleaned and sterilized both kegs when I got them so I'm sure it has nothing to do with the kegs. Both brews were sitting around for a few weeks in the keg and tasting them before carbing they tasted great.
For the time being I've disconnected the first keg and left 30 PSI in it. I thought about dropping it to serving levels of around 12 but since it still tastes flat I'm reluctant to do that. I've connected my other keg up and have it at 30 in the fridge as we speak but I'm fearing the same results.
Does anyone have suggestions? I'm stopping by my LHBS tomorrow to explain the situation to see if they have any additional advice but I thought I'd ask here first.