Carbonation Ruined My Beer

Ok, So I made a IIPA. Everything went well.

10% abv
~63 IBU- Lots of Dry Hopping

I primed it once initially with 2.5 vols of CO2 using corn sugar. The carbonation did not come out though I poured a tester glass to see how it was coming, and it tasted wonderful. Lots of citrus notes good even bitterness followed by a malty backbone. A great beer by most standards. No off flavors that I could detect.

To fix the lack of carbonation, I re-primed the beer with more yeast into each bottle. Waited a week to test again. Poured a glass. Great carbonation. Nice solid head, not as much lacing as I would like, in fact it dissipated pretty quickly. BUT good carb nonetheless. Now when I tasted it, I was initially happy, then quickly became disappointed. For what ever reason my beer still had a great initial hop taste, which was quickly followed by a grassy, green, hay taste.

My confusion is that the smell is identical to what it was before it was carb. Same color, everything. Even after it was carbed. Same smell, look, but with an added nasty grass taste.

The IIPA was perfect before. Citrus hop taste, a good sweet malt backbone, and good mouth feel. But when I developed carbonation, it became a hop bomb followed by grass.

SO, What happend? What can I do? How do I avoid my beer tasting like I ate a fist full of grass?!?!

How long was it bottled when you tried it the first time?
How long has it been since you added yeast (did you really open all those bottles and add yeast?)

First bottling lasted 2 1/2 weeks, its been a week since i re pitched.

And yes I did open them all.... it was a long night.

Added around 1 ml to each bottle of warmed yeast.

I have not had a single beer carb in the same time as another, nor have I had one carb to my expectation. A beer of that gravity could take more than 4 weeks to properly bottle carb.
I think you went through a whole lot of work for something that would have been accomplished with a couple more weeks patience.
There may be a chance that opening and reptiching has caused the new problem.

You screwed the pooch on it he first time, when you simply didn't read stuff on here about WAITING at least three weeks, if not longer before you declared something "wrong" and tried to "fix" something that wasn't wrong to begin with.

The 3 weeks at 70 degrees, that that we recommend is the minimum time it takes for average gravity beers to carbonate and condition. Higher grav beers take longer.

Stouts and porters have taken me between 6 and 8 weeks to carb up..I have a 1.090 Belgian strong that took three months to carb up.

Temp and gravity are the two factors that contribute to the time it takes to carb beer. But if a beer's not ready yet, or seems low carbed, and you added the right amount of sugar to it, then it's not stalled, it's just not time yet.

Everything you need to know about carbing and conditioning, can be found here Of Patience and Bottle Conditioning. With emphasis on the word, "patience."

If a beer isn't carbed by "x number of weeks" you just have to give them more time. If you added your sugar, then the beer will carb up eventually, it's really a foolroof process. All beers will carb up eventually. A lot of new brewers think they have to "troubleshoot" a bottling issue, when there really is none, the beer knows how to carb itself. In fact if you run beersmiths carbing calculator, some lower grav beers don't even require additional sugar to reach their minimum level of carbonation. Just time.

I hate to say it, carbonation didn't ruin your beer, you did. Probably by openning the bottles to repitch more yeast, that wasn't really necessary. The overabundance of yeast with little or no sugar to ferment in your attempted re-carb may have changed the character of the hopflavor, by now having a yeast bite which overwhelms/competes with the hops. Heck maybe the yeast having little or nothing to do attacked the yeast molecules and somehow degraded them. Maybe even just openning the bottles caused some oxydation and that is what you ar picking up. Who really knows, why, just that it happened, unfortunately.

Next time give it more time, and don't try to fix something, that isn't really a problem to begin with. I've found that most new brewers who try to fix something often cause more problems, when nothing is really wrong. When relaxing would have been the best solution.

I've been meaning to remember to add "yeast civil war" to my list of things that can go wrong.

Well crap. Any chance in hell this might all work out? I mean the nose is still consistent with what it used to be and the initial flavor is still on. Could the yeast just be overly active at this point?

I know its not oxydized because Ive seen that happen before, it really changes the profile of the beer, where as this was just a off flavor. I guess I'm just trying to rationalize a reason in which this might all just work out.

Well hopefully I didnt blow $80 to learn what not to do. It was really good too : (

Put the bottles in a box. Ask your wife to hide the box - provided she's been briefed on proper storage (cool & dark) - and not to tell you where the box is hidden for at least six months.

After that, sample a bottle and report back here. If it still tastes like crap, it was an expensive lesson in patience. Reporting it here is a cheap lesson in humility.



Patience, young grasshopper.



Bob

Bob said:

Put the bottles in a box. Ask your wife to hide the box - provided she's been briefed on proper storage (cool & dark) - and not to tell you where the box is hidden for at least six months.

Bob

Click to expand...

And then post how awesome the beer is in 6 months, here https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/ne...virtue-time-heals-all-things-even-beer-73254/