Funny Taste?

Brewed an IPA 4 weeks ago. Bottled half of it 2 weeks ago and kegged the other half, and force carbonated. Keg tasted great, even after only 2 weeks in the fermentor. Opened a bottle yesterday and it tastes strongly of alcohol. Never had this happen before. Sanitization process was good, everything clean and sanitized well. Any idea?

holbyone2000 said:

Brewed an IPA 4 weeks ago. Bottled half of it 2 weeks ago and kegged the other half, and force carbonated. Keg tasted great, even after only 2 weeks in the fermentor. Opened a bottle yesterday and it tastes strongly of alcohol. Never had this happen before. Sanitization process was good, everything clean and sanitized well. Any idea?

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Give it another week or two in the bottle and guessing they'll be very similar in taste. Bottle conditioning takes time and your beer will change pretty dramatically over a three to four week period.

The alcohol flavor in beer can come from too warm fermentation temp and from underpitching. Since I will assume that you kept the bottled and kegged beer in the same environment after racking off and fermented it all as a single batch the best guess I could make is that you may not have had enough yeast in the bottles to finish the job. If that is the case it seems that the suggestion to give it more time is a good one. At best I'm offering a guess but two more weeks in the bottle and you should have an answer to my guess anyway. How well carbed is the bottled?

IPAs tend to be higher gravity brews and if the mash temp was low, you'll tend to get a dry/alcoholy beer.

Time heals many wounds, so let it age. If it's a 7% ABV beer, you'll always have that taste to it.

holbyone2000 said:

Brewed an IPA 4 weeks ago. Bottled half of it 2 weeks ago and kegged the other half, and force carbonated. Keg tasted great, even after only 2 weeks in the fermentor. Opened a bottle yesterday and it tastes strongly of alcohol. Never had this happen before. Sanitization process was good, everything clean and sanitized well. Any idea?

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Based on your post, I am assuming your brew was a single batch all the way up until bottling/kegging. That eliminates any part of your process up until bottling since the beer in the keg tastes fine. Therefore, I think it is a matter of timing.
When you bottled, you added priming sugar which kicked the yeast back into gear. My thought is that they would have produced some traces of other byproducts just like the normal fermentation process. Given a little time, they will again clean up after themselves and break down these compounds.
None of this would have been apparent in the kegged beer since there was no more fermentation after it was kegged. So, give the bottles another couple of weeks to properly condition and I feel sure your off-flavors will be gone.