Is bottle conditioning necessary?

Someone on the forum recently suggested an off-flavor I'm tasting could be due to green beer even though the beer spends a month in the primary. The idea is that the small amount of fermenting during carbonation imparts a very detectable youth to the beer that needs time to be scrubbed out by the bottle yeast. This off-taste is not noticeable before bottling but very detectable afterward. I have a hard time believing the small amount of fermentation can make the beer so hard to drink (almost undrinkable in some cases). I haven't noticed any significant reduction in badness over a 1 month bottle condition, so I'm not sure what to think. It already takes me 6 weeks from brew day until fully carbonated and I really don't think I should ALWAYS have to wait longer. My thinking is that the off-flavor is something else like extract twang. Thoughts?

brewzombie said:

This off-taste is not noticeable before bottling but very detectable afterward.

My thinking is that the off-flavor is something else like extract twang. Thoughts?

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What exactly are the off-flavors or "twangs" you are tasting ?

What extracts are you using?

I personally have a real hard time forming an opinion on a flat beer out of the fermenter, They can taste like joy juice, or ass. Couple 3-4 weeks in the bottle and it's a whole new ballgame.

SKMO said:

What exactly are the off-flavors or "twangs" you are tasting ?

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Medicinal (almost quinine), alcoholic, fruity

SKMO said:

What extracts are you using?

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Pale LME

I recently brewed with DME to see if the off-flavor disappears, but it will be a month before I can taste the result. Here's a link to my previous post with a detailed description of my brewing process.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f37/help-off-flavour-extract-twang-223614/

OK, I was asleep at the wheel and was thinking flavoring extracts, not DME or LME. Sorry.

Medicinal, alcoholic and fruity reminds me of every extract brew I ever made. They were all very drinkable, but the "whang" was always or often there. I think you will find this discussed at length on the forum, with a hundred different theories as to the flavors that can arise from using extracts. I'll stay out of it.

SKMO said:

OK, I was asleep at the wheel and was thinking flavoring extracts, not DME or LME. Sorry.

Medicinal, alcoholic and fruity reminds me of every extract brew I ever made. They were all very drinkable, but the "whang" was always or often there. I think you will find this discussed at length on the forum, with a hundred different theories as to the flavors that can arise from using extracts. I'll stay out of it.

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Well at least that suggests I'm on the right path and will hopefully taste a difference with DME. I'm holding off on all-grain until I have more space etc.

I am glad someone finally made this into a thread. I am not a big fan of 3 week bottle conditioning myself. I start drinking them when they taste good to me. Sometimes even after a month they still dont taste any different. The small amount of primer might change the beer a little, but I dont think it needs a whole fermentation period to be good beer again.

brewzombie said:

Someone on the forum recently suggested an off-flavor I'm tasting could be due to green beer even though the beer spends a month in the primary. The idea is that the small amount of fermenting during carbonation imparts a very detectable youth to the beer that needs time to be scrubbed out by the bottle yeast. This off-taste is not noticeable before bottling but very detectable afterward. I have a hard time believing the small amount of fermentation can make the beer so hard to drink (almost undrinkable in some cases). I haven't noticed any significant reduction in badness over a 1 month bottle condition, so I'm not sure what to think. It already takes me 6 weeks from brew day until fully carbonated and I really don't think I should ALWAYS have to wait longer. My thinking is that the off-flavor is something else like extract twang. Thoughts?

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It depends....see most of the time a new brewer comes on complaining that their beer tastes crappy and the beer is under 3 weeks, then then they come back at 3 or 4 saying "OHMYGODTHATSTHEBESTBEERIHAVEEVERHAD!!!!. It's the same beer, so, if bottle condition doesn't exist, how can that be? Something must be happening, right?

Like Evil wrote....

EvilTOJ said:

Volatile chemicals break down into more benign ones, and longer protein chains settle out.

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Yes, an active process, where a beer isn't tasting good intially, but is later on (like some folks have said, the best beer is always the last beer.) That's an active process that is a result of the yeast in the beer continuing to do their thing. That tiny bit of fermentation, but also the yeast going around and again cleaning up their messes...

Plus like spaghetti sauce the next day, flavors are mellowing out, balance and coming together over that period.

However sometimes a beer still tastes bad after 3 or 6 or a month or so...an no conditioning is going to fix it.. Those are usually the issues talked about on all those off flavor charts like chloramines and issues from too high a fermentation temp, or infection. Those more than likely will never get fixed...

the trouble is, a lot of those "off" flavors taste the same as green beer, the only difference is if it as from simply being green, it will go away.

So how do you know then??????

You wait to see if the Bottle conditioning you doubts exists happens or not....If it does, the beer was green.

If you are sampling your beer before you have passed a 'window of greeness" which my experience is about 3-6 weeks in the bottle, then you are more than likely just experiencing an "off flavor" due to the presence of those byproducts (that's what we mean when we say the beer is "green" it's still young and unconditioned.) but once the process is done, over 90% of the time the flavors/smells are gone.

You can doubt it all you want, but we have tons of folks on here who's beers got better with time...from 1 week to months in the bottle, including me.

So if bottle conditioning isn't real then how do you explain it???? It's a living process.

Yes, beers are going to taste great right away, especially if the conditions that went into making it were optimal, temp control, plenty of yeast, all those great things we recommend. If that's the case enjoy them, more power to you. But if they're not ready, and you give them time and they get better, than that's what we mean by bottle conditioning....

Just because you have a hard time beliving it, doesn't mean it's not true. I mean I have a hard time believing I'm about to have open heart surgery in 10 days.....but that doesn't mean that I don't have an f-ed up aortic valve that needs to be replaced.

We have enough stories in here to disprove your unbelief. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/ne...virtue-time-heals-all-things-even-beer-73254/

It's either than something is going on in the bottle or the beer fairies are blessing the beers and making them all better.


*shrug*

It's not that I disbelieve it's necessary at all, just that it could contribute so much badness with so little sugar/fermentation per bottle. In my particular case, I suspect an off-flavor from something else (extract twang).

I've kept a few particularly bad bottles where there was no known process error and we'll see how they condition in the bottle over the months.

I take it that I could avoid the whole bottle conditioning issue with force-carbonation? Aside from a little mellowing of flavors, we're saying that bottle conditioning is largely from yeast fermenting priming sugars?

brewzombie said:

It's not that I disbelieve it's necessary at all, just that it could contribute so much badness with so little sugar/fermentation per bottle. In my particular case, I suspect an off-flavor from something else (extract twang).

I've kept a few particularly bad bottles where there was no known process error and we'll see how they condition in the bottle over the months.

I take it that I could avoid the whole bottle conditioning issue with force-carbonation? Aside from a little mellowing of flavors, we're saying that bottle conditioning is largely from yeast fermenting priming sugars?

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If you say the off-flavor didn't exist before bottling, but is obvious AFTER bottling/priming, wouldn't that imply that it's due to the bottle fermentation, not a pre-existing condition? (like "extract twang")

First off, sorry to hear about the health troubles, Revvy. I've only been in the hobby about 2 years and you've been a font of invaluable knowledge. Best wishes for a speedy recovery.

As for bottle conditioning, I wonder if there isn't something about Starsan that gives an off flavor at high enough concentrations? I'm a convert to the "speed brewing" movement and have made a stellar ESB in under two weeks grain to glass. But, obviously, that's from a keg. However, I'll occasionally bottle from the keg to share with friends and that's where it gets weird. I'll have a beer that tastes outstanding on tap that ends up with an off-flavor after a day or two in a bottle. I wouldn't say "fruity" or "band aid," but "medicinal" and "alcoholic" certainly fit. I even had a friend's wife call it "salty." It's not very strong at all, but it's there.

Now I use Starsan in the keg as well, but I'm thinking that there must be much more surface area compared to volume in the bottle. Do you think it's possible that Starsan could contain some compound responsible for the flavor that breaks down over time? If that were the case, it's not so much the conditioning that you're waiting for as a "half-life" sort of situation.

I hope to have an answer soon as I've recently bottled a few for a competition coming up in a few weeks and saved a bottle to try on the day of so that I can have the best shot at comparing my notes to the judges. I'm also going to try bottling a few using the dishwasher sanitization method to see if that shows similar results.

Hey Revvy, how do you feel about the bottles being taste or odor free as far as what had been used to sanitize them? I've had a few batches come out differently depending on what I used to clean my bottles that day... Just a thought, and I think you might have posted o this eons ago as well....

sdufford said:

If you say the off-flavor didn't exist before bottling, but is obvious AFTER bottling/priming, wouldn't that imply that it's due to the bottle fermentation, not a pre-existing condition? (like "extract twang")

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It would indeed, but I've never had much luck with tasting off-flavors at bottling. Maybe it's the small amount I taste (a mouthful) or the sweetness from the priming sugar. I'll be paying very close attention to this from now on.

brewzombie said:

Medicinal (almost quinine), alcoholic, fruity

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each one of those off flavors sounds likes an issue with too high a fermentation temperature.

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JLem said:

each one of those off flavors sounds likes an issue with too high a fermentation temperature.

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I thought so at first too, but I now control my fermentations in a 19 C water bath. Here's my process details.

My Process:
- Recipes adapted from "Brewing Classic Styles", modified with Beersmith
- 2 L Yeast starters using fresh Wyeast smack-packs & Mr. Malty website
- 1/3 malt bill = Partial Mash in Cooler Mash-Tun (SS braid; built-in thermometer - 1 hr @ 68 C)
- 2/3 malt bill = pale liquid extract (LME) ; 50% added late
- Partial Boil on stove top (16 L)
- Topped up with tap water to 23 L (not boiled, but uber-soft and delicious tasting)
- Fermented in a temp controlled water bath at 19 C for 1 month in plastic primary bucket [I always have good airlock activity by 10 hrs]
- Bottled with corn sugar (2/3 cup boiled 10 min in water and cooled)

Starsan will not contribute to off flavors if you've properly dilluted it. That's idiotic. it wouldn't be a no-rinse sanitizer if that's the case. In fact it breaks down into yeastfood when it's done, and in the presence of the beer. It no longer will exist in your beer.

You're shooting in the dark....

Listen to this and you'll actually understand about starsan.....

March 29, 2007 - Sanitizing with Bleach and Star San
Charlie Talley from Five Star Chemicals tells us best practices in using household bleach and Star San in sanitizing equipment.

http://media.libsyn.com/media/basicbrewing/bbr03-29-07.mp3

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Whoa. I think "idiotic" is a little harsh. I'm just trying to eliminate variables. Good in the keg, not good in the bottle. The only thing that changes is the additional contact with Starsan, possible contact with the rubber film on the cap (not very likely), and exposure to a tiny amount of O2. The off flavors I get happen within days (if not hours) and don't fit the descriptions of oxidization that I've read (cardboard, sherry), so I don't believe that to be the case. Ideas?

I have brewed 11 batches so far. My first 3 tasted horrible. They tasted great in the bottling bucket and changes to horrible after bottling. I have changed a lot... fermentation temperature control and campden tablets being the two most important.

I don't have those off-flavors anymore. I have wondered why it comes after bottling. My thoughts were that the yeast (during bottle conditioning) eliminate some byproducts, leaving others to shine through?

But, maybe more likely, the yeast falls completely out of suspension in the bottle and this changes the flavor, allowing off-flavors to come through. When we drink from the bottling bucket we are drinking beer with plenty of suspended yeast. I've noticed a substantial color and flavor change in all of my beers comparing bottling time and after bottle conditioning time.

But, what makes no sense to me is that gr8shandini noticed a difference from keg to bottle to mouth almost instantaneously.

If this is true my theories are way off...

OK, I just got done listening to Revvy's link. I agree that StarSan is a great product and I will continue to use it, but if you listen carefully, he talks primarily about using it in fermenters. The fact that it turns into yeast food is all well and good if you have some yeast to eat it. If you're bottling straight from primary/secondary, that's not a problem.

However, if you bottle from a keg of bright beer, there's an insignificant quantity of yeast in suspension. In that case, I think it's quite possible that the "yeast food" StarSan breaks down into could contribute an off flavor. If so, the implication is that the off flavor would also remain present in bottle conditioned beers until the yeast have had their way with it.

The only way to tell for sure is to run an experiment (if someone hasn't already). When I get a chance, I'm going to bottle a few from the same batch using StarSan, bleach, and baked bottles and see if there's any difference. Unfortunately, my next beer up is a stout, so I don't think I'll be able to pull out any faint off flavors against that background. I'll keep you posted when I brew something a little lighter.

Finally, ayoungrad, I think you're on the right track. Yeast has a definite taste that can certainly mask other imperfections. A lot of homebrewers (my former self included) view cloudy beer as a cosmetic problem (which it might be in the case of chill haze), but most often, if your beer isn't clear, you have no idea what it really tastes like.

In my experience it is necessary. I also find 1-2 weeks in the fridge makes a world of difference. I was conditioning - tossing in the fridge for a day and my beer was ok. After the week in the fridge the same beer was completly different.

I had a beer that was literally un-drinkable. Let it condition for a month, put it in the fridge for two weeks and it was tasty.

As i found on my last batch all the sanitizing in the world does not matter if your bottle was not properly cleaned to begin with. 1 small clump of stuff left in the bottle is prime bacteria breeding and even star san can not remove all of it. I now have a bottle washer and have not had any repeat off flavors. just saying perhaps its the bottles themselves.

I don't tend to have a lot of dedicated bottles for homebrew, so I'm usually using empties from commercial brews (immediately rinsed out if bottle conditioned). They get a 30 to 40 minute bath in oxy to clean off the labels and are rinsed with copious amounts of hot water before they get sanitized. If there are any clumps, I sure as hell can't see 'em.

Even if that were the case, it wouldn't affect every bottle; assuming at least some care was taken in cleaning. I haven't noticed any kind of difference bottle-to-bottle. The OP hasn't indicated that it was the case for him, either.

I brewed a Blue Moon clone from AHS. It was a partial mash kit. I controlled fermentation temp with a swamp cooler. It tasted good on bottling day. Two weeks later and there was a band aid taste. At a month it was bad. I contemplated dumping it many times. I did dump 12 because I needed the bottles. It's been six months since brew day and five in the bottle. The beer tastes awesome now. The orange and coriander really come through. Absolutely no band aid taste or burp. Time does heal all.

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This just seems too inconvenient. I condition the beer by leaving it in the primary for a month and then add sugar and bottle it and it goes back to being green beer and has to re-condition all over again?!

Can someone confirm that if I force carbonated with CO2 that this would NOT happen? If so, I'll make a force-CO2 system my next investment.

brewzombie said:

This just seems too inconvenient. I condition the beer by leaving it in the primary for a month and then add sugar and bottle it and it goes back to being green beer and has to re-condition all over again?!

Can someone confirm that if I force carbonated with CO2 that this would NOT happen? If so, I'll make a force-CO2 system my next investment.

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That's a really good point.
If the beer is "conditioned" before bottling.
How would it turn "green" again after you bottle?
All you are trying to do is carbonate it.
As far as the starsan effecting the taste? After I get my next beer in the keg, I am going to rinse a glass with starsan , and one not rinsed and do a tasting to see if I can tell.

brewzombie said:

This just seems too inconvenient. I condition the beer by leaving it in the primary for a month and then add sugar and bottle it and it goes back to being green beer and has to re-condition all over again?!

Can someone confirm that if I force carbonated with CO2 that this would NOT happen? If so, I'll make a force-CO2 system my next investment.

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This is why I've seriously been considering going to a kegging system. Taking great care and patience to clarify and condition the beer beforehand and then having to induce a fresh fermentation making the beer green (somewhat) all over again is a big drawback to bottling. Lately I've been wondering if it maybe alters the taste of the beer permanently somewhat- or if slight variances in the state of suspended yeast could influence the bottle fermentation, causing variances in the taste.

Seems like a keg force carbonated would take care of all this.

dzlater- The beer turns somewhat "green" again because of this renewed fermentation- any young fermentation will generate flavors that you don't want in the final product. Thus, the beer will taste green again until the yeast do their job and clean up after themselves, with time.

Has anyone ever brewed a batch, kegged one half and then bottled the other half?

Most primary/secondary fermentations are delicious at 1 month in my experience. So, why is it that the bad bottling taste doesn't always disappear at 1 month? Is it the corn sugar? Does this happen to the same extent with DME priming? Maybe I'll split my batch next time.

brewzombie said:

Most primary/secondary fermentations are delicious at 1 month in my experience. So, why is it that the bad bottling taste doesn't always disappear at 1 month? Is it the corn sugar? Does this happen to the same extent with DME priming? Maybe I'll split my batch next time.

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As Revvy pointed out before, there are two causes that could be happening here:

Byproducts of fermentation. Yes, leaving your beer in the primary for a month is good practice to allow for the yeasties to clean up after themselves. However the same byproducts are going to appear as the yeast in your bottles consume your priming sugar... and using DME will not get rid of these byproducts. And just like in your primary, the yeast need time in the bottles to scrub out the byproducts.

The other thing is that some beers require time to allow the flavors to meld together as well as off-flavors to dissipate (some do over enough time.) As a personal example, the barleywine I've been conditioning for almost a year now is much better than it was 2 months ago and infinitely better now than it was 8 months ago.

I know this has all been said before but it just needs to be reinforced. As far as beer goes, time heals just about everything.

I'd also point out that primary fermentation is usually being done with an airlock - allowing CO2 to escape, as well as some other "off" odors, like sulfur. Search on "Rhino Farts".

When you bottle your beer & put a cap on it, there is another small fermentation taking place, but there is nowhere for those odors to go, except into solution, in the bottle.

XXguy said:

I'd also point out that primary fermentation is usually being done with an airlock - allowing CO2 to escape, as well as some other "off" odors, like sulfur. Search on "Rhino Farts".

When you bottle your beer & put a cap on it, there is another small fermentation taking place, but there is nowhere for those odors to go, except into solution, in the bottle.

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I also have no means of controlling fermentation temperature in the bottles so if the off-flavor I'm experiencing is from fermentation in-the-bottle then I may be tasting difusel alcohols and esters from slightly hotter than ideal fermentation. This would help explain why some of the badness doesn't disappear after a mere month.

Another thought - since you seem to be finding these flaws only after bottling, you might be introducing too much oxygen in the bottling process. Oxidation definitely results in off-flavors (though I'm not sure about the off flavors you are describing), which do not dissipate with time (and in fact, may get even worse).

ayoungrad said:

Has anyone ever brewed a batch, kegged one half and then bottled the other half?

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Yes, I (and many others I'm sure) do this from time to time, usually with 10 gallon batches. I do it to free up keg space for beers I really want to keg for various reasons. I don't notice a difference, but I usually do this with bigger styles that would mask small differences. If there is a real difference, it's probably just because the bottled beer lasts longer than the kegged beer.

brewzombie said:

I also have no means of controlling fermentation temperature in the bottles so if the off-flavor I'm experiencing is from fermentation in-the-bottle then I may be tasting difusel alcohols and esters from slightly hotter than ideal fermentation. This would help explain why some of the badness doesn't disappear after a mere month.

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Another good point- what's a bit interesting to me is that people don't seem to stress fermentation temp when it comes to the bottle...maybe cuz it's so mild it doesn't really matter? Or because it would just be too difficult without a temp controller?

I wonder if a steady ~66 degrees bottle temp would make for a cleaner beer after 3 weeks...

JLem said:

Another thought - since you seem to be finding these flaws only after bottling, you might be introducing too much oxygen in the bottling process. Oxidation definitely results in off-flavors (though I'm not sure about the off flavors you are describing), which do not dissipate with time (and in fact, may get even worse).

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Any tips for keeping oxygen introduction to a minimum when bottling? I've always wondered about that, I hate having my bucket of beer exposed to the air as long as it takes to fill 50 bottles...

gr8shandini said:

The off flavors I get happen within days (if not hours) and don't fit the descriptions of oxidization that I've read (cardboard, sherry), so I don't believe that to be the case. Ideas?

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brewzombie said:

Medicinal (almost quinine), alcoholic, fruity

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I vote oxidation based on what's been said in both those cases. I too have an occasional "odd" taste that I'd call fruity, medicinal, ???. It's hard to pinpoint, but it has shown up in some/many of my bottle conditioned brews AFTER about 2 or 3 weeks of conditioning. This weird taste in every case didn't exist prior to that point in time (2 to 3 weeks + after bottling). I don't think it's a "green" taste, since it actually shows up after the bottles have aged to the point where they're fully conditioned. I'm guessing my bottling process/bottling wand oxidizes the beer and it doesn't show up until the yeast are done fermenting the priming sugar.

I just started kegging, and only have tasted one kegged batch, but that taste is absolutely not there even after 3 weeks in the keg. Granted that's only one beer, so I'm not for certain that my bottled beers that had the funky taste were oxidized; but I'd bet money on it.

edited...

sdufford said:

I wonder if a steady ~66 degrees bottle temp would make for a cleaner beer after 3 weeks...

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It didn't matter in my case. The weird taste would show up even bottle conditioning at 66 to 68F; not to say it's the same taste as the OP is describing, but it could very well be - it seems to fit his description. My bottling wand always seemed to flow beer into the bottle too fast and I always worried about all the oxygen being available to the beer during bottling. And the taste only showed up after a couple weeks and would get worse with age.

Maybe the the bottle fermentation gives off different byproducts because of a lack of oxygen? The primary is full of oxygen, bottles not so much.

Just wanted to jump in and say that force carbonating is just that, carbonating. It does not make a difference in the "conditioning" of your beer. You'll just have carbonated "green" beer. Hell, you can carbonate any liquid in a corny (a big batch of KoolAid is delicious by the way)

The key for me to get over the whole conditioning process is to brew a lot. You'll eventually get to a point where you have beers stashed in cases in closets that will take a while to go through, and by the time you do, they could be months old and delicious.

MyNameIsPaul said:

Just wanted to jump in and say that force carbonating is just that, carbonating. It does not make a difference in the "conditioning" of your beer. You'll just have carbonated "green" beer. Hell, you can carbonate any liquid in a corny (a big batch of KoolAid is delicious by the way)

The key for me to get over the whole conditioning process is to brew a lot. You'll eventually get to a point where you have beers stashed in cases in closets that will take a while to go through, and by the time you do, they could be months old and delicious.

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We were theorizing that the beer wasn't really green until we added priming sugar and restarted fermentation, which added some greenish notes.

There were posts earlier about StarSan as the bottling sanitizer.

I saw something a week or two ago suggesting possible ill effects of the air bubbles that are the foam of StarSan. No problem in the fermenter, but at packaging? Oh no!

Maybe the issue could be a combo of StarSan for bottling plus not having a bottling tree to drain the liquid before actually bottling?

Or maybe a dirty bottling tree? I had a buddy who was having off flavor issues until he realized that his bottling tree wasn't getting cleaned or sanitized and was definitely not sanitary.