When I tasted the hydro samples in my first few batches, I was all but convinced the finished product was going to suck, but I was dead wrong. Now that I’m a bit more familiar with what to expect, I’m finding that I almost enjoy tasting hydro samples. It’s still kind of exciting to taste your beer for the first time since brewing day, even if it’s nowhere near done, just to see how it is coming along.
Depending on quantities used, I think the bittering hops can often taste a bit “offensive” in early hydro samples. To use a crude description, it’s like I detect them as this conspicuous/harsh flavor element tacked on top of the general flavor profile, rather than being smoothly integrated into it. This might be what OP is tasting. Once you properly condition the beer, the flavors meld and all is good.
As a side note, sometimes trying new ingredients can be jarring in the early sample tastings. The first time I did a recipe that prominently featured pilsner malt, the newly fermented beer smelled very sharp and unpleasant when transferring to the bottling bucket—very different from the mellow fruitiness of the few preceding batches, even though the yeast I used was one I had used before (S-05). I was worried that the beer was ruined, but even though the scent was weird, there was nothing alarming about the taste, so I bottled it. Of course, the beer turned out to be just fine… quite good, in fact.
EDIT: oops, missed the part about this being a necro thread.
