Beer taste like sugar water.

Hey everyone. So I just bottled my 3rd batch of beer a week ago. I have tried one beer after a week from each batch just to see if they are carbonating. It is a Mexican Cerveza clone form AHB. It fermented hard for 2.5 days and I left it in the primary for 3 weeks total. So I pop the cap to a nice fizz pour the beer, it has a great head. Take a sip and it is just plain nasty. Taste like pure sugar water.

My gravity readings were good. So I am curious if I may have done something wrong in my brewing. Did I have a case of my fermentation stopping to soon. Will it taste better with some aging in the bottles? Any info would be appreciated as this beer is undrinkable to me and I dont want to make the same mistake again.

Thanks for all the help guys!

Give it some time to condition. Don't judge it for at least 3 weeks in the bottle.

+1 time to condition. You said the SG readings were good, and you have some carbonation so your yeast are still active. You most likely still have some bottling sugar still be be converted for full carbonation. Just remeber each brew is a little different.

Did you forget the hops?

Tenchiro said:

Did you forget the hops?

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good point

+1 on the hops and I hope it fermented for you, otherwise those bottles will be going Pop Pop Bang in the night.

Do you have a gravity reading on it? I would pop a bottle and check it right now if it tastes that sweet, cause you may just have sugar water if it did not ferment.

recipe? 210....

more info please

Forgot hops or didn't add bittering hops...

Also, Ed is right. If they are sweet, there might be enough sugar in there still fermenting to cause bottle bombs. I'd move them into plastic totes or something and keep an eye on them.

Ok three weeks in the bottle tonight. Opened one up and muuuuuch better. Still a very sweet beer but drinkable. I think I will let them cold condition for a couple of weeks. By the way i did have a bottle bomb. One bottle blew the side right out of itself. Nasty mess but only one. And yes I did add the hops. Just goes to show what a little patience can do for ya. Once again thanks for the help!

I'm glad it improved on you -and it should continue to improve. I have some (granted, different style of beer, these are porters) that have been conditioning almost a year -talk about smooooooth smoky flavor! Mouth waters just thinking about it.
My concern is that you may have had too short an initial fermentation. Especially if the ferment was so vigorous initially. You may well have more bottle-bombs waiting to go off. Keep a good eye on those! What temp did you ferment at? Different yeasts expect to exist in different temperature ranges (though I understand many kits only give a generic yeast, or a yeast pack without much information on it Hate that! ) -I enjoy kit beers because its a lot simpler to have the ingredient kit ready-made, and then just change what I wish to change (for my part, I use specific yeasts for specific beers, and purchase the yeast seperately).

Thanks for the Info. I used a Coopers ale dry yeast. I have used dry yeast in my first 4 batches. I think I will use White labs yeast's from now on. I really just started this hobby as something to do in my spare time. I now know that I can make very good drinkable beer and think I am hooked. I am ready to start trying new things and have heard liquid yeast has a more specific taste for the type of beer your making. I just ordered a Belgian White and will use a white labs yeast in that.

White Labs yeast is good, clskinsfan, but dry yeast ISN'T a bad thing - just certain dry yeasts aren't great.

Around here, you will find many fans of Danstar Nottingham, Danstar Windsor, Fermentis US-05, and Fermentis S-04.

Just thought I'd mention it for the cost savings aspect. Certain yeasts, like a Belgian or a Scottish, are pretty much irreplacable. But fairly "normal" American or English yeasts are well-served with either liquid or dry.

Glad to hear that Cerveza is starting to taste better!

I too am a big fan of White Labs -if you write to them and ask for it, they will probably give you a wall chart that lists their yeasts and the attributes of them. They did for me, anyway. I'm trying to recall, but I think kegkits.com will also include one if you order yeast from them.
I have nothing against dry yeasts, or even yeast from other suppliers -I'm always willing to try something different. I just despise when they give you a yeast pac (dry or otherwise) that has nothing but 'yeast' written on it. Sorry, I won't use that. I want to know whats going into my wort -I may well want to duplicate it -or change it (and it is helpful to know what ALL of the ingredients are). I once purchased a kitbeer from a magazine that ONLY provided a BIG bag of LME, priming sugar, and a packet of "beer yeast". I spent my monies, so I gave it a shot -they also included two hopps packets (marked 1 and 2). This conglomeration of noname wonders actually made a very fine beer, but I won't be doing it again -there was absolutely no way for me to learn what I was using or how it affected the beer -so no way to tweak. Like any other homebrewer, I want to play a little (grin)