Green Beer

This may be a dumb Question, but being new to brewing i hear a lot about green beer, which im sure mine is (hefe 1 week in bottle). I would like to get your guys input on what kind of tastes i should expect to taste and attribute to "greenness". I tasted a bottle of my hefe last night, tasted like beer, but seemed to have a some what bitter "hop" taste to it to me. Almost like a IPA i guess. Sorry my pallet is lacking severely LOL, but i would like to taste my way through the aging process to see if i can gain some taste experience. is the bitter/hoppy taste something i should expect to fade away within a couple of weeks?

That's how I understand the taste of "greenness" and yes it will mellow out with time and let the malt flavor come through.

Depends on the beer. A hefe should be ready in, ya, like 3-4 weeks... a 10+ABV beer should be ready in.. oh... 12 months

zachatola - There are a number of threads here on this subject, my sense of taste is "Do I like it or not".
Green beer is usually kind of flat tasting, even though you get a nice pop when you open it. The C02 has not had time to be absorbed back into the beer.
The other key to green beer is "flavor's fighting or over powering the others". With time things will mellow out, beer is pretty simple depending on the alcohol content, hops and general bitterness. With a Hefe, your be OK, in two to three weeks, happy in a month, and kicking yourself for not saving more in three months.
Higher ABVs, Ciders, Meads, Wines, your talking years to almost decades for it to merge into the magical flavor that is its finest potential.
May I recommend that you stop obsessing, buy another bucket or carboy and start yourself another batch. Your be happier in a month.

Kauai_Kahuna said:

zachatola - There are a number of threads here on this subject, my sense of taste is "Do I like it or not".
Green beer is usually kind of flat tasting, even though you get a nice pop when you open it. The C02 has not had time to be absorbed back into the beer.
The other key to green beer is "flavor's fighting or over powering the others". With time things will mellow out, beer is pretty simple depending on the alcohol content, hops and general bitterness. With a Hefe, your be OK, in two to three weeks, happy in a month, and kicking yourself for not saving more in three months.
Higher ABVs, Ciders, Meads, Wines, your talking years to almost decades for it to merge into the magical flavor that is its finest potential.
May I recommend that you stop obsessing, buy another bucket or carboy and start yourself another batch. Your be happier in a month.

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+1 on this.....Good description Kahuna

Honestly, the answer is anything that doesn't taste "right"....It's a simple as that.

There's no "scientific" description, and since every fermentation and every beer is in a sense different, as is every brewer's tastebuds...It's hard to catalogue anything.

That's why UNTIL a beer is 4-6 weeks old I don't recommend that a new brewer attempt to self diagnose a beer if they think something's wrong...take it to another brewer or if you are lucky a bjcp certified judge...

You kinda have to wait till you've given the beer a time to lose it's greeness before you can say whther or not there really is an off taste (like diacytl or DMS for example) a lot of those flavors will fade with age...


I liken it to spaghetti sauce here...Stone Cold Lead Pipe Lock'd N00b Advice - Page 11 - Home Brew Forums

Here's an Extreme example of what time and bottle confitioning can do to even the worst beer sometimes...

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/ne...virtue-time-heals-all-things-even-beer-73254/