Do you find a high degree of bottle to bottle variance in your beer?

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MrSnacks

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Because I sure do and I'm not totally sure why. Some of it might be storage, some of it might be perhaps the priming sugar didn't mix as completely as you'd expect. In particular I made an IPA and a decent percentage of the bottles just seemed way malty, or that the hop flavor had diminished significantly.
The same thing has happened with stouts before--certain bottles just seemed way sweeter. There's not an easily discernible reason other than taste bud weirdness, unless there's something I'm missing or some mistake I made in bottling?
 
What is your basic process when you bottle? Start from when you rack your beer to the bottling bucket and so forth.

I don't know if I've detected a difference in taste, I am going to say I have not. However, I have noticed some bottles are carbonated more than others, especially batches I brewed and bottled early on when I started brewing. This is definitely the mixture of priming sugar being evenly distributed. I always mark bottle 1, the mid-way bottle, and the last bottle. I usually stick them in boxes in order, near enough, so when I do open them and find more or less carbonation then I can assess what happened. For me, it is mostly the first couple of bottles that were carbonated more or even over-carbonated. The latter bottles are sometimes ones I wish had carbonated more.
 
Hello said:
What is your basic process when you bottle? Start from when you rack your beer to the bottling bucket and so forth.

I don't know if I've detected a difference in taste, I am going to say I have not. However, I have noticed some bottles are carbonated more than others, especially batches I brewed and bottled early on when I started brewing. This is definitely the mixture of priming sugar being evenly distributed. I always mark bottle 1, the mid-way bottle, and the last bottle. I usually stick them in boxes in order, near enough, so when I do open them and find more or less carbonation then I can assess what happened. For me, it is mostly the first couple of bottles that were carbonated more or even over-carbonated. The latter bottles are sometimes ones I wish had carbonated more.
Click to expand...

^What he said, about sums up my own bottling experience as well. I may have some slight variance in carbonation from time to time, but that's obviously the priming sugar not being evenly mixed in. It's not usually an issue for me, but sometimes I get lazy. Otherwise.. no other noticeable difference from one bottle to another.
 
Ipa's are a pita to bottle. I REALLY load up the hops in my iipa. When I bottle all the volitiles hop oils float to the top. It looks like an oil slick. Some bottles get more than others and those bottles are the extra delicious ones. I try to mix the oils into suspension, but there is only so much mixing you can do before oxidizing your brew. I give the ipa a bit more mixing with less worry since I know it will be drunk young.
 
How much hops did you use? You could also dry hop to make the hoppiness more pronounced. Also how long did you wait to drink after they were first bottled. That could have an effect if some were only conditioned for a week and others for a month.

-Jeff
 
In my experience, there is some slight variation between bottles; the only place I've found the variation to be really notable is with dry-hopped beers where the hop flavor tends to be a little less evenly distributed at times.
 
MrSnacks said:
There's not an easily discernible reason other than taste bud weirdness, unless there's something I'm missing or some mistake I made in bottling?
Click to expand...

Are you noticing differences day to day, or with two beers poured side by side?

Even with my kegged beers, the beer can taste noticeably different day to day, I always thought it was "taste bud weirdness" whatever that may be, as well as temperature, as beer varies quite a bit with temperature.
 

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