Describe green beer

[daveooph131]

It's been about a year since I started brewing and I'm still trying to wrap my head around what green beer taste like.

1) describe green beer to you?
2) can watery and lack of flavor be green beer?
3) do malty beers take longer to age than hoppy beers?

 

[Goatey]

Excellent question... I'm still very new to this and I want to know what "green" flavors are.

However, I tried my IPA after 5 days in the bottle and it had a good flavor, though I thought it had a bit of a syrupy taste and feel. There was a little carbonation but I feel like the beer still had to break down a little more.

Maybe it's something like this?

 

[gtpro]

thank you! I was just going to ask this question. . . the beers I've made so far tasted very similar 10 days after bottling to how they tasted 3 months after bottling. With maybe a slightly "smoother" flavor as they aged.

 

[david83]

non carbonation,ive experienced banana or bubble gum flavors.

 

[Grinder12000]

1) describe green beer to you?
2) can watery and lack of flavor be green beer?
3) do malty beers take longer to age than hoppy beers?

A simple answer a 6 in the morning

1. Tastes a little like green apples? sharp and twangy a LITTLE
2. no not really
3. The more complex the beer (number of different malts) in a beer the longer, hops tend to diminish over time. I like young IPA (a month is young).

When you make a brew I always have 1 beer a week and really TASTE and smell. it's is the best way to learn. It's a tough one to talk about, more of a feeling. Some batches never really taste "green" they taste young but not green.

 

[Heineken]

they drink a lot of it around here for St. Patricks day

 

[EoinMag]

To me it's thin and sweet with a lack of body, leave it a while and the hops tend to come through more and the sweetness abates.

 

[Beernik]

Drinking green beer vs. drinking properly aged beer is like eating unripened fruit vs. eating ripe fruit.

Off flavors are still present. Desired flavors are still to sharp or harsh.

I agree, drinking a bottle a week while the beer is maturing is the best way to figure it out.

 

[ChrisS68]

Making beer is kinda like making chili - it needs the proper amount of time to come together. When making chili, you can throw everything in the pot and eat it right away, but will it be any good? Simmer for a couple of hours and the flavors mature and blend, and the results are greater than the sum of the components. Might be even better the next day. OF course, as mentioned, some beers are best served relatively young.

It's hard to say what exactly green beer tastes like as there are a lot of variables. It can be any combination of green apple tartness, cloyingly sweet, or thin and lifeless.

Watery and flavorless is definitely a possibility, or possibly definite. Proper carbonation plays a pivotal role in the mouthfeel of a beer, and without it your beer is just... flat (real ales aside). Also, much of our sense of flavor actually comes via our olfactory senses - what we smell - either directly through the nose or in the back of the throat. The effervescence in beer releases the smells and flavors and helps make beer the beverage we love.

As has been said, more complex beers normally take longer to mature. Generally, the more malt or hops your beer has, the longer you'll want to give it to come together and balance out. Again it depends on the style and what you're going after. Weiss beers are often meant to be consumed young. I too enjoy a relatively young Pale Ale when it still has that fresh hop bite. As a beer ages, the hoppiness mellows and smooths out, which is also a good thing.

 

[Pappers_]

Usually, my younger beers taste harsher or sharper than when they are appropriately aged.

 

[ArcaneXor]

Harsh flavors, individual flavor components competing instead of complementing each other, strong yeast aroma and taste ("yeast bite").

 

[Bensiff]

A green beer hasn't had the time for the yeast to clear out the off flavors so you can encounter any number of those. As well, the yeast and other debris hasn't had the chance to settle out of the beer so when you drink it, you will be ingesting that material too providing some off flavor.

If your beer is watery there could be a number of reasons, most likely carbonation as noted by ChrisS...if its fully carbonated and still watery then there are other issues.

 

[daveooph131]

It's weird. What prompted me to ask the question wa the differences I've noted between my light and dark ales. All of my light ales recently (kolsch, apa ect) have turned out fantastic and even after a hydro reaing at 3 weeks.

However my dark beers are lacking...the
latest a brown ale OG 1.055. At hydro sample of 3 weeks it was just not right. Then had 1 side by side with a moose drool last night and the homebtew had less flavor and body. It's been k
5 weeks since pitch so I figure it is young. Yet at the same time I wonder because my light ales are usually really coming around if not perfect by 5 weeks.

 

[Reelale]

Could be your water. I have very pilsen-like water and I can brew lighter brews without additions. I need to treat my water for darker beers.

 

[Revvy]

Green beer is really any flavor experience that you have that you are not happy with that may be present in the first few weeks of the beer's life that is gone when the beer is fully matured, a few weeks later.

The chili/spaghetti analogy is a good one.

It really can be any number of flavors, many of them are the same ones that are on those "off flavor charts." The only real difference is that they will go away with time.

That's why I say don't sweat any flavor or aroma that you experience from yeast pitch day til its been about 8 weeks in the bottle. Then if the beer still has that, you can look at the causes of it from those charts. But still radically sometimes walking away from a beer for 6 months to a year before deciding to dump it, the beer can end up being OK....

 

[Guinness]

Good topic, and it took me a while to figure out what 'green' meant. A similar characteristic that is hard to pick off is the LME 'twang'. It's similar to the green characteristics, a slightly cidery flavour.

Something else that occurs to me is that many preach the virtues of letting beer age, which I happen to agree with - but with commercial beer, everyone always raved about how much better a pint of 'fresh' Guinness tasted. I wonder what, if any, difference there is?

 

[artguy]

How does storage temperature affect the process of cleaning up the beer? My beer is stored/aged in my basement, which averages 57-58F during the winter. Should I expect "green" flavors to clean up more slowly given the relatively cold temps? I bottle, if that is relevant...

 

[Revvy]

How does storage temperature affect the process of cleaning up the beer? My beer is stored/aged in my basement, which averages 57-58F during the winter. Should I expect "green" flavors to clean up more slowly given the relatively cold temps? I bottle, if that is relevant...

If you are storing that low, you will have very little conditioning occuring...with most ale yeast, you are really close, at that temp, to their flocculation/dormancy temps....so they are moving slow, and consequentially NOT swimming around cleaning up any off flavor precursors., at least as fast as most of us would want......I would tend, if I had access to a storage space that cool, wait til they had conditioned at room temp to the level I liked, like at the point where I would be chilling some to actually drink, At that point I would be movin gany I wanted to store to the cooler level.

 

[Revvy]

Something else that occurs to me is that many preach the virtues of letting beer age, which I happen to agree with - but with commercial beer, everyone always raved about how much better a pint of 'fresh' Guinness tasted. I wonder what, if any, difference there is?

Well most homebrewers don't, at least wwhen starting out, do what the pros do, meaning, we usually don't pitch enough yeast, we don't ferment at the right temps, stuff like that, at least for normal grav beers. So we unintentially create the very stuff that we end up needing to bottle condition away. Though I think there's a certain level of "natural" off flavors that need to age away anyway, but that;'s just me.

There;'s a great thread about high turnover beers, but I'm having a senior moment and am having a hard time finding the thread...but basically it is about gravity of the beer, amount of yeast and temps. In an ideal world, for a "normal" grav ale, aging isn't needed...look at the hefe, for an example.

But one thing to realize Guiness is really not much stronger than any BMC, it's NOT a high gravity beer. Even the pro micros do DO give their beer the time it needs. Look at all the stone releases that they encourage us to do vertical tastings. I'm buzzing right now on a bottle of stone 13th anniversary, and it is an amazing beer.

I say it alot, but I think this really only is an issue for new brewers. When you have a pipleline, you have various beers at different levels of the journey...If you have 2-3 beers going at a time, you're not going to sweat a beer that needs 6 weeks, or 6 months to come online, you are going to have plenty of other beers to keep your tastebuds busy.

 

[GreenMonti]

It's been about a year since I started brewing and I'm still trying to wrap my head around what green beer taste like.

1) describe green beer to you?
2) can watery and lack of flavor be green beer?
3) do malty beers take longer to age than hoppy beers?

Every ones palate is different. There is no one way to answer your question. At least that's IMO.

Just brew and drink what is good to you. Don't over think it. Just remember that commercial and micro beers are geared toward sales. The flavors are muted to satisfy a more diverse crowd.