Just cracked my first home brew! It's good, but it has a weird finish...

I can't seem to even describe it. It tastes great when you first start to drink it, but the after taste/finish something is just "off". It is hard for me to even describe what the taste is. I think the best way to describe it is an unpleasent bitterness. I did a clone of Dead Guy Ale if that helps.

I just made a starter and I was planning on brewing my 2nd batch tomorrow which is an IPA and want to figure out what I might have done wrong so I don't do it again. Any help??

There are lots of maybes in that. I would give folks your recipe and a quick run down of your procedure. Might just be that you don't drink beer nearly as fresh as your homebrew ever so the hops are much more intense than you are used to.

Not knowing much of the details on your process, I would suspect it might be oxydation. Was your wort hot when you transferred it to your fermentation vessel? Or perhaps when you racked to your secondary or bottling bucket you introduced alot of air into the beer and it causes a cardboard like bitterness in the finish.

It wasn't hot when I transfered. When I was transferring to my bottling bucket it started out spewing the brew but I quickly fixed it for a smooth transfer. I would say a cardboard like bitterness is correct. It is not awful, but it is off.

Wait...You may find that after time has passed your brew has gotten much better.

It has been in the bottle for 2 weeks..... I fermented it for 4.

My very first batch had oxydation...I know because I took it over to the local brewery and had the brew master sample and ctitique...and he indicated oxydation had that cardboard oddness. Ever since I made sure to be very careful whenever transferring (I rarely secondary now) to not splash or let the air get at my beer. I changed my procedure and I haven't ever had it since (hundreds of gallons later).

redalert said:

Wait...You may find that after time has passed your brew has gotten much better.

Click to expand...

It might, but if it is oxydation I don't think time heals that. In fact the older my batch got the worse it tasted.

We need more details like what kind of water did you use, your ingredients, proccess, and most importantly yeast and fermentation temperature.

From what it sounds like this may be my problem. The cardboard bitterness(though I am not sure if it is cardboardy) seems to be the best way to describe it. The only thing is that I don't think the amount of splashing that happened when transferring to the bottling bucket was enough to cause this taste. Could it have happened when I was pouring back and fourth from my brew kettle to the fermenter when I first started? How much splashing needs to occur for this to take effect?

Ok, bare with me as this was my first attempt. I bought the Grateful Dead Guy Ale kit form Northern Brewer http://www.northernbrewer.com/documentation/beerkits/GratefulDeadGuy.pdf. The water I used was bought from the supermarket in gallon jugs. Just filtered drinking water. The process was straightforward right out of Palmer's book. I did add a hop addition at a wrong time. I added the saaz hops I believe around 15 minutes towards the end of the boil and not at the end of the boil. Maybe that is where the bitterness is coming from....? The yeast was rogues pacman yeast and I tried my best to keep the temp around 65. It would fluctuate during the day because of work and the fact I live in Florida but I did my best while it was in peak activity to keep it at a cooler temperature. Once it stopped bubbling constantly, I did not keep cooling it down as I was told that once the main activity is over it is not very important to keep the temps on the lower side.

I also just got another description of what the finish is. They are saying it is almost a mineral bitterness at the end. They are claiming it is not unpleasent and I think they may just be being nice, I can't tell.

I also just had my first gusher which was interesting...... and messy!

brew your new batch, and let this was sit a couple more weeks... and i bet the flavors will be better.

Since it's only been in the bottle for two weeks, that flavor may pass with time. However, if you had a gusher, you may have an infection and the flavor will get worse.


When you say the temperature fluctuated during the day, any idea how hot it got during the day?

What did you use to sanitize?

I used starsan. I mean, I tried to do everything EXACTLY the way I was supposed to. The temperature fluctuation may have been from say 72-63. I had the fermentor in a tub of water with a wet towel wrapped around it and I added about 5 frozen water bottles to the water twice a day. Once I put the water bottle in the tub, it got to around 63 degrees.