taste at bottling?

I just bottled my first batch, a pale ale clone. How should it taste at this time? I don't notice anything distinctly bad, but I also don't notice the flavor I expected. It just tastes flat and watered down, like domestic type beer such as a budweiser or miller beer. How much can I expect the flavor to improve?

Don't put too much stock in it. I found that I was often disappointed in the taste at bottling, and very happy later. So let it go for now, and look forward to a "real" taste in a few more weeks!

indeed, i just tasted my first batch after one week in the bottle and it taste much better than what i tasted when bottling...getting excited for the batch to finish.

I find that most low gravity beers taste watered down and thin at bottling that will improve with conditioning leave it alone a couple of weeks and taste one and see how it progressed I find that they all taste good after 3 weeks if you can hold out that long.

I wouldn't worry about it either. Out of curiousity, do you know what your OG was? Also, I make it a point to taste my beers at bottling/kegging time. After you brew and taste enough, you kind of start getting the gist of how a beer will turn out after a few weeks. Also, I find that most beers really need minimum three weeks in the bottle before they actually begin to taste like they are supposed to. So let your bottles sit at room temp for two weeks, then throw 'em in the fridge for at least another week. Of course, you can taste one or two along the way to see for yourself how the flavors develop and balance out. CO2 in the beer makes a huge difference!

I agree Co2 will change it a lot. Also OG readings are important it may actually be watered down. Another thing is did you boil your extract? Boiling will raise your OG and give you more flavor in the end. I know some people recommend late extract additions for light beers.

thanks for the replies, I feel better about tasting the beer in 3 weeks, we did boil the extract and our OG was 1.050 and FG was 1.014