Whenever I make a hoppy brew, it tastes really nice and citrusy for the first week or two, but then it starts to fade in a peppery/spicy taste. I've noticed it especially with Cascades. How do I stabilize these flavors? Is it simply poor ingredients? I love hops and I must get this right.
Peppery Taste Low-Quality Hops?
- Thread starter mew
- Start date
Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:
samc
Well-Known Member
If you are kegging you can always toss in some dry hops. Works wonders for me. If you bottled than pick up a vial of hop oil from freshops.com or other resource and add a few drops to your glass. You can also experiment with different hops if Cascade is fading on you too soon.
How soon from bottling or kegging is it changing?
How soon from bottling or kegging is it changing?
You think its just fading and the peppery flavor was there to begin with, but just covered up? Or the nice hoppy flavors actually turn into pepper?
This is one of the reasons I'd like to keg. I could get a hoppy beer nice and cold after a week to ten days, rather than two-three weeks with bottle-conditioning.
After 12 days in primary it had great hop flavor. After a week in the bottle it had great hop flavor, but was not quite carbonated. After two weeks in the bottle it was noticeably fading. At the three-week point there is little fresh hop aroma left. This seems too fast to me.
ChshreCat
Well-Known Member
Some yeasts will give off peppery esters. What kind of yeast are you using and what temps are you fermenting at?
Ãlbart
Well-Known Member
I've never had the citrus flavour from cascade, centennial or amarillo disappear after only a few weeks in the bottle. Neither do most of the breweries that bottle -- at least to my palate.
Generally, I use something like S-05 at 67 F.
This could be it. I almost always add some Cascade. Mirror Pond is one of my favorite commercial beers, and it's all Cascade, but it doesn't have this peppery flavor. It may also be contamination, because it never shows up until I bottle.
