Beer looks great, but tastes a bit off

[cbrown08]

I recently completed my first home-brew using the Coopers brew kit. I used the Lager package and just followed all of the instructions from coopers. I followed them closely and everything seemed to go very well. I sanitized all of my equipment with bleach and thoroughly rinsed it with hot water (bottles included). Put everything into the fermenter (bottled spring water), and I noticed bubbles starting in about 2 hours. Fermentation continued for about 8 days. I noticed the bubble frequency dropping drastically so I took 2 different hydrometer readings over the last 2 days, and bottled on the 9th day. I kept the fermenter in an almost constant 20.5-21C temp. in a dark room.



So I just had my first one today, 15 days after bottling. The beer had a nice smell and held a great head. The supplied carbonation drops acted just as they should.

However, the beer had a somewhat strong cidery taste right out of the refrigerator (probably around 34F). I let it warm up a bit and while it was better, it was still not "good". It's drinkable, but it tastes more like beer cider. I know this problem can be attributed to infection, but I think it may be more of a temperature issue. I read that lagers should be kept under 20C, so that was my first guess.

My second batch was going to be a coopers Draught kit, with BE1. Has anyone had similar results with the lager kit? Any information would be great. I just got into home brewing and love the process. thanks!

 

[Revvy]

15 days is really too soon to be stressing out about the flavor of your beer...more than likely the beer is just green.

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.

And even carbonation doesn't mean that they will not still be green and need more time to condition....

That belgian strong needed another 6 months before it even became drinkable....

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

I usually wait til it's been in the bottle 6 weeks before I try to "diagnose" what went wrong, that way I am sure the beer has passed any window of greenness.

If you are sampling your beer before you have passed a 'window of greeness" which my experience is about 3-6 weeks in the bottle, then you are more than likely just experiencing an "off flavor" due to the presence of those byproducts (that's what we mean when we say the beer is "green" it's still young and unconditioned.) but once the process is done, over 90% of the time the flavors/smells are gone.

Of the remaining 10%, half of those may still be salvageable through the long time storage that I mention in the Never dump your beer!!! Patience IS a virtue!!! Time heals all things, even beer:

And the remaining 50% of the last 10% are where these tables and lists come into play. To understand what you did wrong, so you can avoid it in the future.

Long story short....I betcha that smell/flavor will be long gone when the beer is carbed and conditioned.

Read the stories in here, and you will see that most of the time even the what we think are the worst beers, if given time turn out just fine.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/ne...virtue-time-heals-all-things-even-beer-73254/

 

[cmoon]

Keep on posting Revvy. I don't post here that often, but everytime I start freaking out about something with my batches, you've got a post here (often comes up in google) that answers my questions. I've got three batches going right now, and keeping a cool head about it (and being patient) has kept me from getting too uptight when the things I expect to happen don't.

 

[Revvy]

Keep on posting Revvy. I don't post here that often, but everytime I start freaking out about something with my batches, you've got a post here (often comes up in google) that answers my questions. I've got three batches going right now, and keeping a cool head about it (and being patient) has kept me from getting too uptight when the things I expect to happen don't.

Thanks!!!!!!!

 

[amh0001]

Haha Revvy, you have that first post copied, ready to paste into all these green beer threads, dont you!

 

[cbrown08]

All i needed to know. I was just wondering because coopers claimed that 2 weeks was all that was required. I know now from reading, thats not the case. Thanks for the info;p

 

[suckr]

Haha Revvy, you have that first post copied, ready to paste into all these green beer threads, dont you!

And I thought I just accidentally clicked on the same post twice...

 

[ReverseApacheMaster]

It's possible the bleach imparted a residual taste on the beer. I had this happen when I used bleach on my first two kits -- it took several months for that taste to clear out.

My first thought is with Revvy, it's just green and needs more time.

 

[cbrown08]

I rinsed everything very thoroughly, and the tank for about 15 minutes. Although I now have some of the StarSan sanitizer for my next brews

 

[fatguy-littlecoat]

I rinsed everything very thoroughly, and the tank for about 15 minutes. Although I now have some of the StarSan sanitizer for my next brews

starsan rules... also i bet you added a tone of sugar to your coopers kit.. ive done the same one and the beer had a slight cidery taste to it because of the sugar added.... i suggest going to 2.5 extract boil kits...

 

[cbrown08]

I used the provided sugar for the kit I had. From what I've read, the standard coopers brewing sugar is almost all sucrose.My next batch i am going to use the brew enhancer 2 with contains dextrose, maltodextrin and light dry malt. The boil method seems to be the way to go with liquid extracts also (I did not do this the first time)