Is my beer skunked?

[deltachild7]

Hi all... I recently brewed a golden ale with a kit and I was a bit surprised at how bitter it was when it came to bottling day. It spent about 10 days in primary and 3 in secondary, and its been bottled for a week. We used Cooper's carbonation drops for priming/carbonation. I'm assuming it just needs more time to work on the sugar, but when I opened a bottle tonight it made a slight hiss... Then pouring it in a glass there was no foam at all and it tasted kinda bitter, but not really *worse* per se than flat beer.

Does this sound like something that needs more time or is this beer done for?

Any advice is appreciated!

 

[m1batt1]

Patience is your best friend right now. Without knowing your recipe and hop schedule its hard to say whether the bitterness is just green beer or a slip up on timing of your hops. More than likely though you just have a very new beer and some bottle conditioning will make everything better.

If the beer was still cloudy at bottling or you sucked up some trub in the sample you tasted you could be tasting the yeast too. This is very possible out of the bottle too since like you said they provably aren't completely carbonated yet so there's still a lot of yeast in the beer working.

 

[jrgtr42]

What he said.
And to carry on, less than 2 weeks from brew to bottle seems a bit low to me. I do spend a bit longer than average, but in the future, let the beer tell you when it's done.
Once the major fermentation is over, (indicated by, among other things, airlock activity,) give it at least another week for the yeast to finish their job and to settle out. Only then open up and test gravities.
Personally - and others will probably chime in on this - for most beers we brew, there really is no benefit to secondary. Most people here will only do it for special beers - long term aging, wood, fruit, souring...
Also, a week really isn't enough for carbonation - minimum two weeks, and sometimes even longer.
IN any case, give it more time, your beer will likely end up fine.
And I've said it before - patience is the hardest thing for a new brewer to learn. It takes time to make good beer, and the longer you can give it before moving on to the next step, the better.

 

[davekippen]

"Skunked" only happens when a beer is exposed to light. If you had a glass carboy and it sat in the light the whole time, it may have skunked. Skunking and bitterness are not related in any way!

Other than that, I agree with the first posts whole heartedly!