Tasted my First batch, I dont know.??

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anthonyb15fd

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well I bottled my very first batch.. before I bottled it I had a taste.. It smelled good but tasted alittle watered down.. But then when I was almost finished with the bottling I tasted it again and it was very strong and good.. Is that normal..? Im not sure if I messed something up or not...
 
It's likely that you got a little bit of hop particulate and trub in the second sample, which would make it taste hoppier and a little bit thicker.

Once the beer has carbonated it will develop a bit more flavor and some tartness from the dissolved CO2 so it will probably taste more like the second sample.
 
I felt the same way about my first batch which I just bottled. I thought it tastes slightly watered down at bottling too and I was a little dissappointed, I thought I had messed it up some how, but let me tell you the beer has a nice full flavor and great aroma after just 12 days in the bottles it just need a little more carbonation. As I'm sure everyone here will tell you, time seems to heal everything with beer.
 
RDWHAHB. your beer is fine its just green as all get out. NEVER make a decision on a beers taste till a minimum of 3 weeks after bottling.
 
RDWHAHB. your beer is fine its just green as all get out. NEVER make a decision on a beers taste till a minimum of 3 weeks after bottling.

and if you're still not sure after 3 weeks, maybe wait 4 or 6 months. I put some berries in a golden ale back in august, it sucked....really badly. tasted like a sweet tart. had one of them last week. very smooth berry flavor, with a very well balanced finish... .just took a while to get there.
 
Carbonation will go along way towards improving the flavor. As well as bottle conditioning.

The thing to remember though is that if you are smelling or tasting this during fermentation not to worry. During fermentation all manner of stinky stuff is given off (ask lager brewers about rotten egg/sulphur smells, or Apfelwein makers about "rhino farts,") like we often say, fermentation is often ugly AND stinky and PERFECTLY NORMAL.

It's really only down the line, AFTER the beer has been fermented (and often after it has bottle conditioned even,) that you concern yourself with any flavor issues if they are still there.

I think too many new brewers focus to much on this stuff too early in the beer's journey. And they panic unnecessarily.

A lot of the stuff you smell/taste initially more than likely ends up disappearing either during a long primary/primary & secondary combo, Diacetyl rests and even during bottle conditioning.

If I find a flavor/smell, I usually wait til it's been in the bottle 6 weeks before I try to "diagnose" what went wrong, that way I am sure the beer has passed any window of greenness.

Fementation is often ugly, smelly and crappy tasting in the beginning and perfectly normal. The various conditioning phases, be it long primary, secondarying, D-rests, bottle conditioning, AND LAGERING, are all part of the process where the yeast, and co2 correct a lot of the normal production of the byproducts of fermentation.

Lagering is a prime example of this. Lager yeast are prone to the production of a lot of byproducts, the most familiar one is sulphur compounds (rhino farts) but in the dark cold of the lagering process, which is at the minimum of a month (I think many homebrewers don't lager long enough) the yeast slowly consumes all those compounds which results in extremely clean tasting beers if done skillfully.

Ales have their own version of this, but it's all the same.

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.

Of the remaining 10%, half of those may still be salvageable through the long time storage that I mention in the Never dump your beer!!! Patience IS a virtue!!! Time heals all things, even beer:

And the remaining 50% of the last 10% are where these tables and lists come into play. To understand what you did wrong, so you can avoid it in the future.

Long story short....I betcha that smell/flavor will be long gone when the beer is carbed and conditioned.

In other words, relax, your beer will be just fine, like 99.5%.

You can find more info on that in here;

Of Patience and Bottle Conditioning.

Just remember it will not be the same beer it is now, and you shouldn't stress what you are tasting right now.
 
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