Tasted my first brew today, advice needed

My first batch, an american pale ale has been in bottles for 3 weeks and I popped one open to try tonight. There was a little carbonation but not much and the beer, while it had decent flavor it had a watery taste. Should I chalk this up to still being green beer and give it a few more weeks. Being my first batch, I thought I was showing some restraint by waiting 3 weeks so I was a little disappointed that it doesn't seem quite there yet. I guess some more patience is in order. Thoughts?

Sounds green to me. Let those bottles sit at room temperature for another 2 weeks and give one a try.

Under-carbonation will make your beer taste lifeless. Hopefully a bit of time can cure it.

Yeah-- I'm with flyguy on the taste of it being due to the lack of carbonation and waiting 2 more weeks with them at room temperature. Hopefully that CO2 will increase to where you want it.

It also may be just that one bottle you tried maybe didn't get enough priming sugar if you didn't mix it in well....but I'd still assume that isn't the case and would wait 2 weeks.

They are GREEN! What was your priming method?

I would check a second bottle before aging longer to see if the carbonation is even. My first batch was very uneven.

Thanks for the feedback. My american pale ale spent 3 days in the primary (per instructions, but now I know that is a bit early) and then I racked to my secondary for 14 days. I primed with cooled down priming sugar mixture in the bottom of the bucket and then racked on top of it. I slowly stirred the mixture for a very brief time, 3 or 4 stirs but was second guessing it and stopped and got on with bottling. I'm gonna give it a few more weeks in bottles and taste again. Hopefully they will get better with time. Thanks.

How big are your bottles?

22oz bottles take longer on average I've seen for carbonation than 16 or 12 oz bottles.

My first beer was a little undercarbonated, but I still drank the bejeebus out of it. There's 4 bottles left, and at 2 months in, the carbonation is crisp and aggressive and just right.

FlyGuy said:

Sounds green to me.

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My first thought when I read the title.

See Ya in 2 or 3 weeks.....let me know what you think then.

I had my first batch bottled and 2 weeks later tried it and it was good, carbonated but very little head... but one more week later and it's got a perfect head, tastes better and has a bit more flavor to it.

Let is sit another week or two then try it.

I keg now. But, I remember a batch that I primed for bottling just before I switched to kegging. I think I failed to stir the priming sugar really really well in the bottling bucket. Half of my bottles carbonated well. The other half were quite flat. The beer all came from the same batch. So, the only thing I could come up with was a concentrated amount of priming sugar in some of my bottles and hardly any in the others.