I need help - My Irish Red Ale Taste bad

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Bubble-n-Foam

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I'm new to homebrewing. My first batch just finished. It's an Irish Red Ale, but it taste like something is wrong with it. I just don't know what.

Here is the recipe I used:

Malt Extract: 6lbs Gold LME
Specialty Grain: 12 oz Carmel 40, 2 oz Special B, 2 oz Roasted Barley
Hops: 1 oz Cascade (aroma), 1 oz German Tradition (bittering)
Yeast: 1 package dry yeast

Heres what I did:

-First I steeped the grains. I didn't boil them, but I didn't know the exact steeping temp. I did that for 20 mins.

-Then I started the boil, added the malt, and brang it back to a boil.

-As soon as it started boiling again, I added the German Tradition Hops

-After 60 min, I added the Cascade.

-10 min later, I took off heat and let cool.

- I filtered as much as the hops out as I could with a strainer

-I added yeast and let it ferment in a plastic bucket for 2 weeks

-I added priming sugar and bottled it.

-I let it sit in the bottles for 2 weeks.

So now that you know what I did, maybe you could help me out.

I was trying to brew a smooth beer, similar to smithwicks, but what i got was a beer that just doesn't taste right. I'm no beer expert, so i don't know how to discribe it. It seems harsh not smooth. Taste bland? is that from the hops?

I brainstormed what i thought it might be... Could it be one of these?:
- It wasn't aged long enough?
- I used water right out of my facet (city water) (too many minerals, or chlorine?)
- I didn't use moss finishing (too much suspended protein?)
- I may have added the yeast when the mash was too warm (could that effect it?)
- I used dry yeast (would liquid yeast really make that much of a difference?)
- I didn't hydrate the dry yeast, i just poured it in the mash once it cooled down
- I only had one fermenter, so no second fermentation

Or is the bad taste from something else? Or is this what "real homebrew" is suppose to taste like?

I just need some anwsers, so my next batch turns out more to my likeing

Thanks
 
1. its only 2 weeks old - very green beer still. it needs time to age.

2. the hop choices don't look right for an Irish red ale (american hops and german hops....you need English hops)

Give it time, and if you crafted your own recipe, stick to a pre-made recipe for the next few batches until you have enough experience to know what different ingredients (or hop substitutions due to the hop shortage) are going to do to the end product.
 
It could be your water but my first suspect is not aged long enough. It's only 4 weeks from brew so your talking about a really green beer. It will probably be good in another 3-4 weeks and great in another 6-8 weeks. I find green beer is usually too harsh for me to enjoy and tend to age mine a couple months or more before I really like them.
 
Give it a couple more weeks in bottles and then try another. Store it in a dark, room temp. environment and after time it should get much better. Lots of people here use dry yeast, tap water, and skip secondary and still produce great beer.

BTW, do you know what the wort temp. was when you pitched the yeast? I know ale yeast should be pitched around 65-75 degrees (depending on the specific yeast) but I'm not sure what effect this has on the finished product.
 
If you steeped the grains above 170 F, you extracted tannins from them, which would give a harsh, astringent taste- make sure to have a thermometer in the pot next time, and aim for 155 when steeping.
As mentioned above, though, give it time. My third beer was a porter that I didn't like at all when I first tried it. A couple of months later, I was feeling pretty proud of myself.
 
Just a couple things..

The word you're looking for is "wort" instead of "mash".

Some of the things that can be wrong:
Fermenting temps hanging over 70F for too long.
The beer is too young, wait 2 more weeks.
You also boiled your bittering hops for 70 minutes when I would think the recipe you were going for was 60 minutes. I understand you saw 60 minutes and 10 minutes hop additions but that 10 minute addition really occurs with 10 left in the original 60 minute boil. Just a little more bitter than intended.
 
Well it looks like the majority of you think it's because it hasn't been aged long enough. What effects does aging the beer have? Why does the flavor of the beer change?
 
There's a very complex chemical process that is happening while the beer ages. Volatile chemicals break down into more benign ones, and longer protein chains settle out. What this also means is off flavors can disappear, along with hop aroma. I can't describe it better than that, but all I know is aging works.
 
Bubble-n-Foam said:
Well it looks like the majority of you think it's because it hasn't been aged long enough. What effects does aging the beer have? Why does the flavor of the beer change?

Rather than re-invent the wheel and rewrite the explanation for the most common new brewer problem- Tasting a beer too early and panicking if it taste funky or is under/overcarbed, I'll refer you to this post.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showpost.php?p=558191&postcount=101

and to this thread as well, https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=54362 you'll understand then WHY the majority of us think the beer is still green.

Oh and welcome to your newest obsession, homebrewing!:mug:
 
Also, did you take gravity readings? What was OG/FG for the brew? Did you top up with water or boil the whole 5 gallons? If you did top up at the end of boil, did you mix well?
 
I took gravity readings, but I don't remeber what they were. I think I finished with an alcohol content of around 2.5%.

I started with 4 gallons, it boiled down to 3-ish, then I added about 2 gallons of tap water to bring it to 5 gallons (it wasn't boiled).
 
Revvy said:
Rather than re-invent the wheel and rewrite the explanation for the most common new brewer problem- Tasting a beer too early and panicking if it taste funky or is under/overcarbed, I'll refer you to this post.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showpost.php?p=558191&postcount=101

and to this thread as well, https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=54362 you'll understand then WHY the majority of us think the beer is still green.

These Threads were helpful, Thanks!

I think I'm going to taste my beer every couple days or so to find out when it taste the best.
 
Bubble-n-Foam said:
These Threads were helpful, Thanks!

I think I'm going to taste my beer every couple days or so to find out when it taste the best.

Just don't start any "Is my Beer ruined?" threads until you've waited at least 3 weeks.....:D

Don't drink it all though, you'll end up regretting it....The last bottle is always the best tasting one. In my case, my last bottle of each batch is dated and left alone in a dark cupbard for 6 months..
 
Bubble-n-Foam said:
I took gravity readings, but I don't remeber what they were. I think I finished with an alcohol content of around 2.5%.

I started with 4 gallons, it boiled down to 3-ish, then I added about 2 gallons of tap water to bring it to 5 gallons (it wasn't boiled).

It could taste bad becuse of this as well. 2.5% means one of two things:

1) Low starting gravity - the recipe you used did not have enough sugars to make a high enough alcohol content brew, or you screwed up somewhere and didn't get enough sugars into the pot.

2) High Final Gravity - if your starting gravity was spot on, then your yeast did not attentuate much and left you with an extremely sweet beer (leftover sugars not consumed by yeast).

You could either have a 'too hoppy' beer for your tastes - 70 minute hops on a 2.5% beer can be very hoppy. You could also have a 'too sweet' beer - the beer did not finish at a low enough gravity and left a lot of residual sugars around.

Either of those 'could' explain why your beer tastes bad. I'd STILL wait around for it to taste better. If you leave it be - it will either get better or it won't. If you throw it out, it will never get any better and you wasted hours and money over something that might be good next month.
 
Bubble-n-Foam said:
These Threads were helpful, Thanks!

I think I'm going to taste my beer every couple days or so to find out when it taste the best.

Taste ONE every 7 days. Otherwise you'll be out of crappy beer in no time. Nothing sucks worse than drinking all that nasty crap - only to have the last bottle which waited just the right time taste SOOOO good that it makes you angry that you drank all the grap and now you don't have any beer left.
 
jezter6 said:
If you throw it out, it will never get any better and you wasted hours and money over something that might be good next month.

I'm not planning on throwing it out. Haha, it is beer after all. Be a shame to put it to waste.

jezter6 said:
Taste ONE every 7 days.

7 Days is probably a good idea, but i'm impatient, so i'll probably end up drinking it all before it taste good, but i'll try not too...

I'll let you guys know if it ends up tasting better.
 
I used this recipe as well, Irish Red kit from Midwest. Brewed it on 3 Nov 13. The last time i brewed this beer it came out smooth and smelled and tasted a bit like bananas. This time however it is thin and tasteless (other than the funny undefinable flavor I get) compared to the other one (I still had a bottle of that first go at the red (my first brew) laying around and tried them side by side, but they are 2 distinctly different brews)

6lbs gold LME
15oz corn sugar
12oz Crystal 40L
2oz Special B
1oz Roasted Barley
1oz cascade
1oz US Fuggle
Safale US-05 Yeast (no starter)

I started with 6 gallons of water that boiled down to 4 after a 60 minute boil. steeped grains at 160(higher than i was shooting for, but heat is harder to control with a wood fire). Cascade boiled for 60 min US fuggle for 2. after putting it in the fermenter bucket i found out that i only had 4 gallons, so i dissolved 15oz of corn sugar into 1 gallon of water, heated and cooled it and added it to the wort.

OG 1.052
FG 1.008

I tasted it when i racked it to the keg on 29 dec and i noticed this off flavor and the thin nature of the beer. So i doubt it is green beer. I added 2 Jalapeno and 1 Chile peppers (a pre planned move) hoping that i would at least get some spicy hints and the Jalapeno sweetness, they are barely detectable. I pulled a small sample again tonight and the beer is still thin and funny flavored, but a tiny bit of spice is detectable if you drink a large mouthful of it. My wife tasted it (she isn't a huge beer drinker) and said it tasted like "something went bad."

I am overly anal about sanitation and cleaning, i doubt it was an infection. there were no signs of strange growth in the fermenter or the keg. This is the first beer that has had any kind of weird properties. Irish red, Black IPA, IPAs Midas Touch clone, and wheat beers all taste great, this red.... not so much.
 
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