Will beer get less 'sweet' with age?

I tried brewing years ago (10yrs ago) a few times with kits, and just started to brew again this year. Having the same problem as before though, sweet beer. Tastes like there is too much sugar in it.

I'm using a kit... I'm a newbie so need to start somewhere. I brewed the "Coopers International Series English Bitter" as seen here

http://store.coopers.com.au/products/home-brew/4-home-brew-cans/english-bitter-home-brew-1-7kg-

This time I started using the hydrometer and actually following directions. Kit instructions are to add the contents of the can to 2 litres of boiling water, add in 1kg of Dextrose, then mix into 18 litres of cold water. Take the reading then add in the yeast. OG was 1.050. After 9 days, I moved the contents to the secondary fermenter (leaving behind the sludge) and after about a month the FG was 1.014.

I then added 200ml dextrose to 1 cup boiling water to dissolve it all, put it into container, then siphoned the brew into the same container leaving behind the crud at the bottom. Then bottled it.

Now the instructions said to wait 12 weeks after bottling to drink, but I tried one anyway after 3 weeks. Way too sweet/heavy for a bitter and worried 9 more weeks won't help it. My original brews all had the same problem, even with a regular pale ale it was way too sweet.

Doing the math that was on the Coopers can to find the ABV, it puts my Bitter at about 5.325% which the can suggested 5.3% so, pretty close. I also left it in the secondary fermenter longer than I should have by a week to make sure the yeast was done. Just worried the Stout I have on the go now will have the same problem.

Anyone know where I'm going wrong?

If the final product is too sweet, then odds are good that you're not going to be happy with pre-made extract.

Extract is made at the optimum extraction efficiency temperature, which tends to make a fairly unfermentable wort. So whenever you're using extract, the final product is going to have a fair amount of sugar left over (although honestly speaking, most of it should be in the form of untastable dextrins.)

You might want to try adding some beano or some Amylase enzyme to the primary to dry the beer out some more.

If you like IPAs, adding some extra hops to the boil to drive the balance further towards bitter might suit your taste as well. (The beer won't be any less sweet, but it will seem like it is flavor wise.)

Oh, and in direct answer to the question asked, no.

Aging the beer won't reduce the sweet flavor that's present (assuming that the beer had finished fermenting before you bottled it.) If anything, the sweet flavors will be enhanced in most brews as the bittering flavors tend to fade as time goes by.

Darn... I want to get into brewing with grains/hops but not yet. Just got a basic brewing kit and wanted to get some use out of it before upgrading.

I want to start brewing more beers like Hoegaarden, Rickard's Red, and Guinness which I know would require more equipment than what I have but, had hoped for a few decent kit batches first.

Like I said, try adding some enzymes to your primary. That will go a long way towards making your brews dryer.

Beano is a brand name of an anti-gas pill in the USA available at Wal-Mart and pretty much every other store with a pharmacy department. I duuno if it's available in Canadia, or what name it would be under, but Amylase Enzyme should be available from any homebrew shop for 5ish bucks a bottle (and you only need about 5mLs a batch.)

Just be ready to for those enzymes to drop your FG (and up your ABV as a consequence)

I'm assuming that since your bitter was bottled 3 weeks before you tasted it it was fully carbed and you chilled it first, but as a general rule, a warm flat beer will taste far sweeter than the same beer carbonated and chilled. The Co2 adds it's own bitter bite that counteracts any sweetness.

If it IS the extract issue noted above, you can try adding a pound of dextrose (corn sugar) or some type of sugar to the pre-fermented wort during the boil. This sugar will dry out your beer a little and make it seem less sweet. Brown sugar will add a subtle flavor and some color for a bitter, a brown or darker beer.

snailsongs said:

I'm assuming that since your bitter was bottled 3 weeks before you tasted it it was fully carbed and you chilled it first, but as a general rule, a warm flat beer will taste far sweeter than the same beer carbonated and chilled. The Co2 adds it's own bitter bite that counteracts any sweetness.

If it IS the extract issue noted above, you can try adding a pound of dextrose (corn sugar) or some type of sugar to the pre-fermented wort during the boil. This sugar will dry out your beer a little and make it seem less sweet. Brown sugar will add a subtle flavor and some color for a bitter, a brown or darker beer.

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He's already running a kit and Kilo beer, so adding more dextrose would probably push him over the limit of what the yeast can handle before they give up on digesting the Maltose.

In addition, just adding corn sugar by itself won't dry a beer out. You have to replace malt extract with dextrose if you want a dryer beer. Just adding corn sugar will increase your alcohol without affecting flavor much at all.

So... add even more dextrose? As per the instructions, I added 1kg of dextrose at the start, then used dextrose again at bottling.

The instructions said 1tsp dextrose per bottle at time of bottling, so I just did the math for approx 40 bottles and worked out to being approx 200ml dextrose.

No.

If you add more dextrose now (bottling time) you will explode your bottles... and I mean that quite literally. Chunks of beer covered glass will be sprayed everywhere near your (formerly) carbonating bottle.

Snailsongs was talking about adjusting the recipe for a later batch by adding more dextrose.

Oh I know that... I mean at the start.

I was referring to Snailsong saying "If it IS the extract issue noted above, you can try adding a pound of dextrose (corn sugar) or some type of sugar to the pre-fermented wort during the boil."

Seems like a LOT of Dextrose, adding 1lb of dextrose in addition to the 2.2lbs the instructions already had me add. (Think I converted that right, I'm Canadian so, for us it's 1 kilogram).

That starts getting into some more technical discussion territory.

In general, adding dextrose to a recipe can make it taste a bit more dry. All the dextrose will do is add alcohol, but increasing the amount of alcohol bite with the exact same amount of residual sugar can make it seem less sweet. (There's no less sweetness left behind, but your taste buds will be distracted by the alcohol flavor that is increased.)

I really don't think that will help in this case though. Since you're already running near 40% simple sugar (from memory the Malt Extract can is about 1.5 kilos compared to the extra 1 kilo of dextrose) adding more simple sugar will cause problems with the yeast.

When the yeast are rehydrated they take a look at their surroundings and will decide how to configure themselves to take best advantage of their environment. If there is more than about 20% simple sugars in the solution they will configure themselves to do a freaking awesome job of eating those sugars, at the cost of their ability to metabolize Maltose (the main sugar of malt extract.)

The more simple sugar in the wort, the less they will be able to eat the malt extract. This will leave you with more malt sugars left behind, meaning more semi-sweet flavor.

In short, with the amount of dextrose you're already adding to the wort, I suspect adding any more would leave you with an even sweeter, less palatable brew.

In an all-malt brew if you replace 1kilo of malt extract with 700 or 800 grams of dextrose you will keep the same ABV but make a less malty brew. Since you're already using a lot of dextrose, adding more would probably cause problems.

Hmm... so the verdict pretty much is that the Can-Kit brews like Coopers are more-or-less always going to be 'sweet'... unless you alter the directions quite a bit.

So, doing it from scratch with grains/hops etc will produce a beer closer in taste to that of what you buy in the store?

That's my main goal... something similar to a store brew and not very obviously home-brewed like these can-kits have been for me so far.

THRobinson said:

Hmm... so the verdict pretty much is that the Can-Kit brews like Coopers are more-or-less always going to be 'sweet'... unless you alter the directions quite a bit.

So, doing it from scratch with grains/hops etc will produce a beer closer in taste to that of what you buy in the store?

That's my main goal... something similar to a store brew and not very obviously home-brewed like these can-kits have been for me so far.

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I'd suggest ditching the Cooper's kit, and buying a kit like these: http://www.austinhomebrew.com/index.php?cPath=178_452_42

Any of those would be fine, or a kit from Northernbrewer.com, Brewmasterswarehouse.com, morebeer.com, etc. Those "kit and a kilo" beers that are prehopped just don't have the same flavor and balance as a kit made with hops and malt extract. The kits from those "name" online brew stores have good instructions, and are very good quality ingredients, and I think you'd be very happy with them.

Ah nice... they have a lot to choose from. Though I suspect I'll need to buy more equipment. I have the base kit right now.

Basically this without the wine corker

http://mountainhomebrew.com/images/products/detail/2331.jpg

I gather for real beer making, I'd need a good big pot for boiling in, a good thermometer... anything else? Kinda between jobs and a newbie so, looking for the base bare minimum.

A decent thermometer, some sanitizer, a pot that can hold 3 gallons (even bigger if you have one), some siphoning gear, etc. That's about it. If you have a big canning pot or spaghetti pot, that would work for boiling. You can boil a small amount of wort, and use water to get up to 5 gallons.

Hm... easier than I thought. I always assumed I'd need some sorta masher for the grains, fancy giant copper equipment and such. I think once my "kit and kilo" Stout is done I might give it a shot for some real brewing.

Also, no one said I screwed up with what I made in my original post so that's a plus.

THRobinson said:

Hm... easier than I thought. I always assumed I'd need some sorta masher for the grains, fancy giant copper equipment and such. I think once my "kit and kilo" Stout is done I might give it a shot for some real brewing.

Also, no one said I screwed up with what I made in my original post so that's a plus.

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Oh, yes, you can all that if you want! But, some of our fancy gear is just because we like going bigger and better all of the time. It's not strictly necessary.

A step up from the prehopped can kits you've been using is some fresh (unhopped) extract, hops, and possibly some crushed grains. It's like making spaghetti sauce with canned tomatoes, in a way. Mostly fresh ingredients, but a little help with the canned start. If you wanted to go all out and grow your own tomatoes, that would be a bigger step. Same with brewing- you can start with some quality ingredients and make really good beer just by purchasing the right ingredients. If you wanted to get obsessed, you could spend a fortune on other items- but very little of it is actually necessary.

(I just realized that I made two references to spaghetti in this thread- I must be hungry! )

Going from the Kit and Kilo brews to extract kits from AHS or any of the other homebrew stores is pretty seamless.

Equipment wise, the only new stuff you'll need is a thermometer. I like using the digital ones from the local big box store. They cost about 15 bucks and the most I've had one be off was 1*C. Just be careful not to submerge the entire probe in wort or the electronics in it will get wet and be destroyed.

If you don't have one, an auto-spihon is also wonderfully convenient compared to a racking cane.

Brew day, the only differences between an AHS kit and a Coopers Kit and Kilo are that you'll need to steep the specialty grains in hot water (65-70ish degrees) for half an hour. Which is pretty much exactly like making tea, AHS will even send you the teabag included in the kit. Then you'll be boiling your wort for 1 hour instead of the 10 minutes or so that Coopers tell you to.

And that's it. Everything else is identical between an extract kit and a Kit and Kilo batch of beer.

Nice... I am all over that AHS site now like a kid in a candy store debating what one to make. Belgian White so far is winning... I'll assume that's the Hoegaarden 'like' brew.

Hoegaarden White Clone Kit

That one should be pretty close to spot on. I've been impressed with how close their clone kits are.

Ah didn't even see that sections... what a very helpful forum.

Thanks everyone

whatisitgoodfor said:

He's already running a kit and Kilo beer, so adding more dextrose would probably push him over the limit of what the yeast can handle before they give up on digesting the Maltose.

In addition, just adding corn sugar by itself won't dry a beer out. You have to replace malt extract with dextrose if you want a dryer beer. Just adding corn sugar will increase your alcohol without affecting flavor much at all.

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The recommended additional fermentable for the Coopers International Series English Bitter is 500 grams of dry malt extract. Not 1 kg of dextrose. As for this kit and kilo beer thing, Coopers recommends an additional fermentable for it's beer kits, the user is free to choose what and how much additional fermentable sugar to use.

I just made a Coopers Real Ale yesterday with 500 grams of DME and 500 grams of dextrose as the additional fermentables. I used reinvigorated yeast from Coopers Sparkling Ales I found at my local beer store. All I did to reinvigorate the yeast was add dextrose water to the sediment in 4 of the bottles. After 3 days, the yeast was churning. Yesterday I made the beer and it took all 30 minutes including cleanup. Checked it this morning and it is frothing on top with a beautiful head of tiny bubbles. Took a quick taste and I think this beer is going to be awesome.

Sadly no local stores carried anything... the brew shoppes around here are few and far between and almost only deal with wine products. The brew place I got the kit from said that the dextrose would work so, assumed they knew more than me and just used it.

THRobinson said:

Sadly no local stores carried anything... the brew shoppes around here are few and far between and almost only deal with wine products. The brew place I got the kit from said that the dextrose would work so, assumed they knew more than me and just used it.

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You should at least suggest to your local store to carry some form of dry malt extract and unhopped malt extract syrup.

Here is a recipe to clone a Fullers ESB using the Coopers English Bitter:http://blog.makebeer.net/Home/tabid/74/EntryID/232/Default.aspx

To me, the "greenness" of a young beer tastes like sweetness. After awhile, a couple more weeks, the sweetness goes away.