Hello. First, let me say that I finished my first brew ever, and as many of the first timers on this site am probably over-reacting. I did search for this topic on the site and didn't find any specific answers, so here it goes:
The beers that I bottled last taste completely different (better) than the ones I bottled first and have very different "mouth feel" due to different kinds of carbonation.
I know which bottles I filled last because they were "misfits". I popped a couple open only a week after bottling and they were GREAT! They tasted like "real" beer, and while the carbonation was low, they had the typical little small bubbles. After the success, I kept opening the misfit bottles and drank about 5 which were all the same quality.
After the second week, I opened a couple of the bottles that were near the beginning of the assembly line and they are completely different. They have huge, soda pop like bubbles and a sort of dry champagne/cider taste.
My hope is that, despite my efforts to keep the priming sugar thoroughly dissolved throughout the mixture, the sugar was of a higher concentration in the bottom of the bucket and thus the first bottles have more priming sugar than the latter. As such, the first bottles might need more time to ferment out that sugar than the later bottles? (Assuming that more unfermented sugar gives that cidery taste and led to the difference in carbonation)
That is the only explanation that I can come up with. Has anyone else ever had a similar experience? Do you think that if I just let the earlier bottles sit longer that they will start to taste better? Or should I have drank the whole batch within the first week when it tasted right?
The beers that I bottled last taste completely different (better) than the ones I bottled first and have very different "mouth feel" due to different kinds of carbonation.
I know which bottles I filled last because they were "misfits". I popped a couple open only a week after bottling and they were GREAT! They tasted like "real" beer, and while the carbonation was low, they had the typical little small bubbles. After the success, I kept opening the misfit bottles and drank about 5 which were all the same quality.
After the second week, I opened a couple of the bottles that were near the beginning of the assembly line and they are completely different. They have huge, soda pop like bubbles and a sort of dry champagne/cider taste.
My hope is that, despite my efforts to keep the priming sugar thoroughly dissolved throughout the mixture, the sugar was of a higher concentration in the bottom of the bucket and thus the first bottles have more priming sugar than the latter. As such, the first bottles might need more time to ferment out that sugar than the later bottles? (Assuming that more unfermented sugar gives that cidery taste and led to the difference in carbonation)
That is the only explanation that I can come up with. Has anyone else ever had a similar experience? Do you think that if I just let the earlier bottles sit longer that they will start to taste better? Or should I have drank the whole batch within the first week when it tasted right?