First batch tastes awesome but smells.

[dolphi123]

Hey everyone, this will be my first post on the forum. A few days ago I tasted my first batch of beer and I have a few questions. The beer was a Festa Brew Blond lager and it tasted great! Although there was a very prominent smell of wort. My closest guess was there was un-fermented wort remaining, but the beer did not taste sweet. Interestingly while taking Sg readings throughout the process it only took the beer around 4 days to drop to an Sg of about 1.010 and remained there for 3 days. So I assumed it was finished and bottled it. Any idea why it would smell worty? My second question is after opening a bottle(The bottles were the Grolsh kind with the swing tops) The cap flew up with a lot of pressure so I assumed the beer was primed right. After pouring the head rose about 2 fingers so that was good. But the head disappeared within 45 seconds to where no head was present. I assumed the most common cause for that is poorly primed beer but as said above the cap on the bottle flew up with great amount of force. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Nick

 

[Pappers_]

Welcome to HBT, Dolphi!

It was probably done in the 7 days you left it, but there is no harm in leaving the beer in the fermenter for two, three or even four weeks. The yeast continue to work, even when final gravity has been reached.

About the carbonation, tell us about how you primed/carbonated the beer and how long ago that was. Someone will get back with a reply.

 

[porterpounder]

Standard strength ales generally benefit from about 10-14 days in the fermenter prior to packaging, maybe a bit more for high-sulfur producing yeast strains. Lagers usually finish in 1-2 weeks, but can benefit from another 2 on the yeast and/or a 2-3 day diacetyl rest prior to lagering (about one week per degree Plato OG) prior to packaging in bottles. Wortiness in a finished beer is often to product of the base ingredients. Extracts can be worty, as can high additions of caramel malts or old malt. Old malt tends to be more perfumy.

The head retention issue is often a process and/or ingredient problem, or you poured into a dirty glass.

 

[flars]

The beer with only seven days in the primary would still have had a lot of yeast in suspension when you bottled. This is probably the reason for the worty smell.

How long did you bottle condition and how long did you chill the first bottle before sampling?

Not allowing enough time for bottle conditioning would have left yeast in suspension instead of settling out. The yeast would have been nucleation points for the CO2 produced by the priming sugar and caused the eruption on flipping the cap off.

The head disappearing could be due to soap residue in the glass or too short of conditioning time.

 

[dolphi123]

Thanks for the quick responces Heres some info on my setup. I have 2 Fast Fermenters, I left the beer in the fermenters for about 10 days because within 3 days the Sg was 1.010(which I was surprised) so I decided to leave it in the full 10 days like the instructions said. I then dumped 1 and a half cups of dextrose in the 23L fermenter and then immediately bottled. I left the beer to prime for 2 weeks like the instructions said, placed the beer in the fridge for about 4 hours then sampled it. What I found really interesting is after posing this thread the worty smell has almost fully gone. So maybe cooling it had something to do with it? I will also try to really wash my glasses from now on. I will update you guys when I get home from work(Or I might crack one now )

Thanks

 

[Pariah3j]

Give it another week and then try one - the beer may not be done bottle conditioning. Usually 2 weeks I would say should be enough, but what your describing to me is what happens when I've open a bottle that has only been conditioning for about a week to a week 1/2.

I had a beer that I bottled about 9-10 days ago that I decided to try last night, it was a half bottle and the last little bit out of the bottling bucket, so it was yeasty and I knew it wouldn't be fully carbed. It was an experiment to see if less beer might carb quicker, answer nope Unfortunately it wasn't carbed at all... It popped open the ez-cap bottle, and it 'popped' with some force like it was carbed up, it did have a bit of head, but it faded almost instantly and tasted flat.

So my advice - give it more time, its not done bottle conditioning.