Sampling green beer

How often do you taste your beer?
I usually start tasting it after first two days of fermentation are gone.
First glasses are really little ones, as it tastes veery greeny, but the more days passes, the more I drink it...
Last week I brewed my first all grain with hop, and in this days I appreciated a lot the evolution of the hop flavour and bitterness.

I usually don't try it until I rack it, but there is something to be said about trying it at different times, it allows you to see the way the beer changes over time.

I usually taste my hydro samples....before pitching, and a month later when I bottle...But I make no judgement on the beer....Then I bottle and stick it in the closet for 2 weeks and 5 days, then stick a bottle in the fridge for 2 days...ANd taste that...If it's carbed and taste great, then fine...if not...back in the closet of a week...I follow that pattern until the beer is where I want it...

Me too, I taste the hydro samples.
I'm interested in feeling the changes, as time goes by and the yeast add the product of his metabolism ( as higher alchols, esters and so on)...

Giovanni said:

Me too, I taste the hydro samples.
I'm interested in feeling the changes, as time goes by and the yeast add the product of his metabolism ( as higher alchols, esters and so on)...

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That's a great goal and way to learn about the fermentation/conditioning/aging process...

One thing you might want to do is brew a simple recipe....like one of the SMASH ones on here...but something kinda hoppy (not IPA hoppy, but still very bright with hops, so that you can even see how they fade with time) and set a weekly pattern of sampling all the way from before yeast pitching through a year in the bottle...and take copious notes....and share them with us...If you do this even with pulling samples pre-bottling, one 5 gallon batch of this test beer will last you about a year...

That would be great, but I should try to analyse "quantitative" parameters, not just qualitatives judgment. Something like pH, light trasmittance, chemical data and so on....

When I went to kegging it allowed me to see the results of a days aging on the beer on tap. This american ale I have on tap now is still very green but I can taste the evolution of it when I try it every other day. I was in secondary for about 3 weeks then went to keg but it is still very green. The first pull off it smelled very yeasty, and very green, everything was very rough. even two days later when I tasted it, it was much better, still not good but better. The hard smell is gone and the biscuit malt is starting to show through in the aroma. The harsh taste is still there. But is slowly dissapearing. I prefer tasting the progression this way over bottle because you can litally taste the difference from day to day.

I taste my beer every time I meet it. I snort the grain, chew the hops, sip the steeping water, sup the wort both hot and cold. I taste the hydro samples, quaff the bottling leftovers and drink one or two bottles green at various stages. .......I see no good reason to stop doing that yet.

How many days the beer was left to age in the past centuries?
I think they would start drinking it way early than now, something like sorghum african beer, that is selled while still fermenting...

Giovanni said:

How many days the beer was left to age in the past centuries?
I think they would start drinking it way early than now, something like sorghum african beer, that is selled while still fermenting...

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I don't know about the past, but I'm betting they never drank it green unless there was a good reason, like the cultural African thing.....Heck, I dunno! :cross:

I usually check whenever I take gravity readings. Usually at the beginning before pitching, going into secondary, and a few days before bottling.

Giovanni said:

How many days the beer was left to age in the past centuries?
I think they would start drinking it way early than now, something like sorghum african beer, that is selled while still fermenting...

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They drank their beers relatively fresh...meaning immediately once fermentation stopped.

Remember not all indigenous (in fact most of them didn't) contained hops...so there was no preservatives in many of them, so they went bad quickly...and from what I've studied most of them tasted like a$$ anyway...and had little or no carbonation as well.....Remember most of those "beers" were based on spontaenous fermentations back then, not on harvested and cultivated yeast strains....Wild yeast and other enzymes...

I mean it when I mean other enzymes.....not all beer fermentation was done with yeast. Patrick's Blog: Chicha: Corn-spit Beer

And by today's standards, (pre pasteur) sanitization was not what we had today, soe there were many micro organism competing with the yeasts...

It's not to say that the all tasted bad...my theory is that overall they had to taste decent for brewing and beer culture to have survived for over 2000 years...if the stuff was all noxious, then beer would have gone the way as "new coke" and "pepsi clear."

If you're really interested in idigenous and ancient brewing, this is a fairly decent book...it's a little biased, in some ways, and I think many of the recipes are a bit dubious....BUT until something better comes along, it's at least interesting.

Laughing_Gnome said:

I don't know about the past, but I'm betting they never drank it green unless there was a good reason, like the cultural African thing.....Heck, I dunno! :cross:

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a common practice in 18th century england was to mix a green beer with a much older souring beer. the price you paid was based on the ratio; more old beer, cheaper price. this is part of the evolution of stout.

Yes, from what I've read about indigenous beer also wild lactic bacteria and also acetobacter played a strong role in the process, expecially about souriness