Lost hop flavor in the bottle and don't know why

Any ideas on what happened here?

Ok, so I wanted to enter a pale ale I made into a competition a few weeks ago. The beer was kegged and in order to get it into the bottle I just turned the gas down to around 4 or 5 psi and let it trickle into the bottle until I had a handful of bottles full and capped them. I don't have a beer gun yet so that wasn't an option. I sent two into the competition and kept the rest here to try on the day of the tasting to see what had changed and how the beer tasted. It was only about two weeks later. The rest of the keg however only lasted about another week so it was all gone and I had none of that to compare it to but it tasted WAAAY different out of the keg. Awesome hop flavor and aroma IMO.

So here is what happened. We opened a bottle Saturday to see how it was and ALL the hop flavor and aroma was gone! ALL OF IT! It tasted like malt extract. No hop at all. I dry hopped it with 3 oz of whole leaf hops and it was in the range of IBU's for a pale ale. We opened a couple more and all of them had the same thing going on.

Now to compare it to something else, I made a ten gallon batch of this stuff and this 5 gallons is all gone but the other I had fermented with Belgian yeast and it's on tap right now and tastes just as hoppy as the first round did when it was in the keg. It's really good but not even comparable hopwise! Is hopwise a word?

Anyways, here is the recipe and I appreciate anyone helping me with this if you have some input that can prevent this in the future. Thanks!

Pale Ale
Efficiency 75%
Batch size 12 gal
O.G. 1.051
F.G. 1.013
Color 8 SRM
ABV 5.04%
IBU 38.7
Yeast: 1 of the primary is Wyeast 1272 the other was Belgian Ardennes both had a 2L starter.

22 lb Canadian 2-Row
.25 lb Amber Malt
1 lb Crystal Malt I
1 oz Amarillo 60 min
1 oz Amarillo 30 min
Yeast Nurtient 15 min
Whirfloc 15 min
1 oz Amarillo 15 min
1 oz Amarillo 10 min
1 oz Citra 5 min

Dry Hop each secondary with
.5 oz Amarillo
1 oz Citra
1.5 oz Simcoe

 

I would look at oxidation as being a possibility. You can dull up flavors pretty quick with oxidation.

Did you purge the bottles with CO2? Were the bottles kept cold?

 

I didn't purge with CO2. I don't have a beer gun yet so really had no way of doing that at that moment. They were kept warm for about 5 days and then went in the fridge for two and then we drank them. I didn't think oxidation would take over so quickly.

 

The first beer I bottled with my Blichmann BeerGun was super fresh and it was judged in a comp and both judges said it reeked of oxidation and one said it "must've been a really old beer" even though it was in the keg for 3 weeks after primary.

I'm pretty sure I bottled at too high of a PSI - the sheet recommends half serving pressure, but I think that's too high. I did another bottling with chilled bottles and lower psi and it was much improved. I'm still not sold on the Beergun yet...same as you (even though you don't have a BG), I think the bottles that I bottle with it don't taste as good as the kegged beer. Maybe we're doing something wrong.

 

Oxidation can be a tricky problem to tackle. I had a small oxidation problem about a year ago that I had to go through my entire process to eliminate all possible ways that would allow oxygen in.

I noticed a big difference switching from buckets to glass carboys.

Hmmmm. It could possibly, although I would defer to an expert on that issue. I can't think of any other thing that could have caused it. Not sure.

 

How was your palette when you tasted it without the hop flavor? Had you drank some beers before that, or ate something that could have thrown your palette off? Maybe the hop flavor was there and for some reason you weren't detecting it. That can happen quite a bit with the right combination of beers and/or foods.

 

I had a couple but my wife and her friend also had it and they said it was way off too. I just don't get it. The difference was really big. I'll just have to try with a couple more from my other kegs and see if it does the same thing.

Thanks for the comments.

 

I doubt that's the issue. Beer tastes great from the keg. Only variable that changed was use of the beer gun.

 

Hops do fall out over time and some hops, mostly C hops, fall out more quickly than others. Oxidation is possibly the problem, but easy to prevent by capping on foam and purging bottles with co2. For bottle beer, you want about twice the carbonation levels of draft beer, not half. When bottling from a picnic tap, you will want to double the keg carbonation and bleed the keg just before bottling so the beer just trickles out. Get to your proper head space and bang the bottle down gently tp initiate foam. Then cap quickly after the foam comes out the top.

 

I know for your case it wasn't, I was just putting it out there that I noticed my beers would have some oxidation when fermented in buckets.

 

Yeah I had the beer with about 2.5 volumes of co2 just turned the pressure way down to bottle it. I definitely didn't tap the bottles down or purge with co2. Maybe next time I'll get my carb level up before putting in the bottle. However, when I poured a glass of this stuff out of the bottle it was still quite carbonated and a good head on it. Just part of the trial and error I guess.

 

I got a 35 on this beer at a recent competition so I think that the beers I sent there stayed fresh and hoppy as opposed to what I had tasted. Must have stayed cold the whole time after I bottled it and shipped it off.

I have a beer gun now and will be using that to bottle out of the keg for competitions or just send in straight up bottled brew.