Does bottled beer taste different over 3 weeks?

[joeyjojojr]

Hi. I tried my beer after 1 week. Carbed but nothing fabulous. Is the yeast creating off flavours during this mini ferment?

 

[flars]

You still have "green" beer after only one week of conditioning. Give your beer two to three weeks of conditioning, longer for high gravity beers. Condition in the 70°F range. A few days to a week chilled and flavor will have developed making an okay beer really good.

 

[PIGMAN]

Hi. I tried my beer after 1 week. Carbed but nothing fabulous. Is the yeast creating off flavours during this mini ferment?

You'll be amazed at how the beer improves with age, even beyond three weeks.

 

[william_shakes_beer]

yup, anything less and you're just killing babies. Oh, the horror!!!

 

[DaNewf]

My wife will ask how old a bottle of my homebrew is before she'll accept one. Anything less than six weeks she might pass on it if there is anything else available.

IMHO the lighter beers I make now are fine after 3 weeks at 20degreesC followed by a at least two (5-7 is better) days in the fridge. But the beers I made when I was starting out and didn't have a good way to control temperatures definately benefitted from some extra conditioning. That has influenced my wife's opinion to this day (over 2 years later).

The only reason to drink beer at one week in the bottle is if you want to get a sense of how beer improves over time. That or there is nothing else left in the house to drink and it is too late/you are already too drunk to go out and buy something.

 

[cobrem]

To add to the dogpile - you probably do have a bit of yeast in suspension, which probably is contributing some flavors (not necessarily good ones). Call it conditioning/melding of flavors/settling of particulate matter, with three weeks it will be better - especially if you have them in the fridge for a couple of days afterwards.

 

[RM-MN]

Hi. I tried my beer after 1 week. Carbed but nothing fabulous. Is the yeast creating off flavours during this mini ferment?

There are a number of factors in the flavors of beer that hasn't had some time in the bottle and yeast can definitely be one of them. There is a way to minimize this. Leave your beer in the fermenter longer and much of the yeast will settle out and the other compounds that give you a "green beer" flavor will have time to be cleaned up by the yeast or changed into a compound with more favorable flavors. The one beer that I left in the fermenter for 9 weeks was very good at one week in the bottle. I feel that 9 weeks was a bit extreme but 3 to 4 would be a good compromise.