Just poured my first homebrew. It sucks.

[notey]

I brewed a "True Brew - All Malt Porter." Sanitized and followed directions to the letter as far as I know. Left it in the fermenter for 2 weeks, then bottled, let that condition for 2 weeks. Now I've just poured my first one and it tastes like pennies and alcohol swabs. Given the wort in the fermenter was 80deg for the first 12 hours that is probably the main mistake. But now I know about swamp coolers so hopefully the next batch will be good. If only I knew what to do with 40 more bad beers.:smack:

 

[petrolSpice]

Let the bottles sit for awhile, like months. Those flavors may die out to the point that it's drinkable. I'd say fermenting too hot was the cause.

 

[kharper6]

I've got about 40 beers left from a batch 2 years ago that really sucked ass.


Hoping it gets better but it never has. grassy, assy, diacetyl hardcore. Fermented at about 80 degrees in a hot summer.

After that batch, got a fridge with a temp controller.

 

[kh54s10]

Well I think you have found what to change for your next brew. You might try mixing the beer with Budweiser or something cheap, maybe it would make it drinkable. Otherwise...

 

[ChrisfromAbby]

Hmm. Look into your water. Was it chlorinated or worse chloraminated? That can peoduce some nasty metallic flavors. A pinch of potassium metabisulfite in 5 gallons of all the water you use will eliminate that.
Strong alcohol taste may be because its still to green, or that you fermented a little too warm.

Keep going! It will be worth it. We all have to dump the occasional batch!

 

[notey]

Hmm. Look into your water. Was it chlorinated or worse chloraminated? That can peoduce some nasty metallic flavors. A pinch of potassium metabisulfite in 5 gallons of all the water you use will eliminate that.
Strong alcohol taste may be because its still to green, or that you fermented a little too warm.

The water is definitely very chlorinated. The boil was 2 gallons for this malt extract kit and the boil water was 50/50 RO/tap because I read something about needing a fair ppm. The other 3 gal was all tap.

MoreBeer has helped with this.

 

[downtown3641]

Three things to look into for you next batch:

1) The water: Don't worry about using RO water for your extract batches. Buy some Camden tablets and use 1/4 of a tab per 5 gallons of tap water. This will help with the chlorine/chloramine.
2) The yeast: If your first batch was anything like mine, it came with a little 6.5 gram package of dry yeast. This isn't enough yeast. Look into getting a package of US-05 or S-04 for your next batch. They're 11 grams and are enough for most beers.
3) Fermentation temperature: Get a container large enough to hold your fermenter (I use a large beverage bucket) and fill it with water up to the level of your beer. Keeping the water temperature in the low 60's has given me good results.

These three things a will greatly improve the quality of your beer early on in the hobby. The key to brewing great beer is giving the yeast the best conditions for doing their work. As you gain more experience, you can do a little more to improve your fermentation, including liquid yeasts and starters, injecting pure oxygen, and more refined temperature control.

Also, make sure you aren't getting old kits. Old extract doesn't give you a good start on brewing a great beer.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Home Brew mobile app

 

[DeBAD]

Porters are pretty forgiving. Leave it in the bottle another 2 to 4 weeks and try it again. It still might not be great, but it will mellow out enough to be drinkable. Also try stirring in a little liquid vanilla flavoring into your glass. Vanilla porters rock!

 

[brewbama]

When troubleshooting change one variable at a time. How about ordering a kit from another supplier to see if it's better. If it's the water, your equipment, or your process it will also taste like ass. If it's good beer you got a bad kit and your water, equipment, and process is good.

 

[soccerdad]

Try making a beer batter with one of them .. if it's good, go catch a mess o' fish.

 

[ScottG58]

I find that one of my taste perceptions with beer that needs to mature awhile is a metalic taste. Young beer can also taste strongly of alcohol. I know it's tempting to despair when you've put so much effort into a brew. I have had several I did not like when I first tried them. I have had one that I forced myself to drink because I hurried the process and had a beer that tasted like green apples to the last drop. If you are worried about your process, don't change more than one variable at a time. Hang in there. It gets better.

 

[F_R_O_G]

i'm surprised nobody mentioned that poorly stored malt can cause metallic flavors. i think this is most likely the case. that or you used a new aluminum pot.

i'v made beer when i pitched it at 80deg for the first day and 1/2. it turned out drinkable, though not that great. i let it sit for 4 months and it got much better.

 

[Ancient_Hopus]

I'm taking the mindset of letting my darker beers sit longer; 2 months before I even bottle.. 1 month in primary; 1 month is secondary.. then at least 2-3 weeks in the bottles.

Also if you took good notes; look at what you can change and play around with it..

 

[Rhumbline]

Two weeks is pretty short for fermentation time, and as others have said the temp didn't help.

Did you measure gravity?

 

[bpnc9702]

I have never made porters, I have had beers ferment at temps close to 80 in the summer, typically room temp or mid 70s..If mine at peculating good at a temp I try to let it stay there and do its thing. However, did you try tasting it after it was complete and you did your measurements? At least that can give you an idea and you can use process of elimination if it was the recipe, the fermentation, something that could have contaminated it at a certain point. I know beers flavor mellow out throughout time (some more than others) but I keep the beer from my measurement my gravity (I never pour it back in the batch), I do this after the batch is completed and also when I rack or bottle, perhaps during these times you may notice something is off (if it is) and use that as a process for identifying the problem.

 

[Yooper]

The water is definitely very chlorinated. The boil was 2 gallons for this malt extract kit and the boil water was 50/50 RO/tap because I read something about needing a fair ppm. The other 3 gal was all tap.

MoreBeer has helped with this.

The "metallic" flavor probably came from your water. I'd definitely use RO water if you have it available. You don't need any tap water at all, and with extract brewing you don't have to worry about mashing and mineral concentrations. You may have some iron in your water, and that combined with the chlorine means that your water may not be suitable for brewing.

The "alcohol swabs" flavor came from fermenting too hot, and you know how to fix that so I bet your next batch will be great!

 

[titansvol]

Yooper is spot on as always.

 

[ltwhiskers]

Don't lose hope. Now that it looks like you have some steps to try next time you just gotta keep trying. My first batch tasted soapy (because I didn't know not to use dish detergent when cleaning. I also made a terrible pumpkin wiezen that my allspice addition killed. Bad brews happen sometimes, but such hard times are worth the pain when you get it right.

 

[FuzzeWuzze]

Try making a beer batter with one of them .. if it's good, go catch a mess o' fish.

This, try your metalic porter in a small pot and boil a braut in it to see how it tastes...i bet a porter beer braut would be amazing.

Theres a chance the metallic flavor follows it, im not sure...so try one braut out before going all in

 

[Macdonald87]

I did a stout, same thing at first was horrible tasting, I went ahead and brewed more and actually forgot about the stout for awhile I opened up one this xmas must of been 9 months in the bottle and it was amazing.

 

[hoox]

Sounds like my first batch...check out my Thread for interest sake:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/fermentation-too-hot-451380/

I can't stop drinking my second batch. My third batch is way more 'text book perfect' and about to bottle in the next 4 days (Has been 7 days at the mo).

 

[notey]

Thanks all for the help. Gravity was 1.043OG to 1.013FG. I'll definitely heed your advice on the next batch.
When you're saying to let it sit for awhile, that's at fermentation temp right? About 70?

 

[creepyjackalope]

Don't sweat it too much. I tasted my first brew a week ago and it was really astringent and pretty bad. Had another a week later and it's a drinkable beer! Not gonna win any awards, but for my first go at this I'm pretty happy with it. The bulk of it is still conditioning. Gonna leave it alone for a couple more weeks at room temp then chill it and make my friends drink it with me.

 

[ChrisfromAbby]

I'd give it a month at 70 degrees then another month at about 45. If that won't make it drinkable, I'd probably pitch it.

RO will definitely cure the chlorination problem, but so will PMBS (Campden). Since RO water costs me $3/5 gal jug and my tap water is amazing (other than chloramine) I go with the PMBS. If you have a lot of mineral in your tap water, then RO might be the way to go, particularly for soft-water beers.

Chris

 

[LandoLincoln]

Another vote for using a campden tablet in your water. Chloramines in our water made our first few beers taste really bad. Campden tablets went a long way into making our beers taste a lot better. Proper fermentation temps helped to take our beers from "decent" to "excellent."

 

[BigFloyd]

Another vote for using a campden tablet in your water. Chloramines in our water made our first few beers taste really bad. Campden tablets went a long way into making our beers taste a lot better. Proper fermentation temps helped to take our beers from "decent" to "excellent."

+1.

Next time, use the Campden. 1\2 tab per 5 gallons before the boil.

Also, do whatever you have to do to chill the wort to about 60-62*F before pitching yeast. After that, keep the temp at 64-65*F (beer temp, not ambient) for at least the first 4-5 days.

Do these two things (plus good sanitation, of course) and your beer will be much, much better.

 

[passedpawn]

Bad batches get dumped pretty quickly around my house. That bad batch sitting there is like a dark cloud always ruining your mood.

Dump and don't look back. Write it off as a lesson learned (ferment at proper temps!).

Also, I use campden in my water, which is treated with chloramine by the utility company. Don't know if I really need it... I do it out of peer pressure

 

[notey]

Just to follow up, this batch has been sitting for another 5 weeks and still tastes terrible. I think I'm going to dump it.

 

[bondra76]

Also consider bottled water. A lot of grocery stores (or maybe even your local hardware store) sells the huge jugs of bottled water. I've just recently started going that route.

I brew in a garage, so bottled water is easy for me vs. going into the kitchen, filling something up to 6-7 gallons and then lugging it out to my garage. I'm starting to appreciate my man cave and I try to keep everything out of my kitchen/house now.

 

[bondra76]

Also consider bottled water. A lot of grocery stores (or maybe even your local hardware store) sells the huge jugs of bottled water. I've just recently started going that route.

I brew in a garage, so bottled water is easy for me vs. going into the kitchen, filling something up to 6-7 gallons and then lugging it out to my garage. I'm starting to appreciate my man cave and I try to keep everything out of my kitchen/house now.

 

[dadshomebrew]

I would actually second the use of bottled water at this stage in your process. It is not too expensive for extract volumes and you will absolutely rule out the water issue, allowing you to move forward with some positive results. Consider it like setting up a control for an experiment or a baseline. Then as you gain some knowledge on your local water supply you can treat appropriately, brew, and compare results to those obtained from the bottled water.

Of course if the bottled water beer tastes like pennies then...

 

[Paradigm]

My first beer was OK, most likely because it was a porter. My second one was terrible. We've all been there

 

[erick0619]

I brewed the exact same kit for my second batch after about 5 weeks in the bottles it tastes amazing and left a decent head and decent lacing just give it time

 

[BigFloyd]

Excellent. The only problem is...................now you're hooked.

 

[tokerlund]

I brewed a "True Brew - All Malt Porter." Sanitized and followed directions to the letter as far as I know. Left it in the fermenter for 2 weeks, then bottled, let that condition for 2 weeks. Now I've just poured my first one and it tastes like pennies and alcohol swabs. Given the wort in the fermenter was 80deg for the first 12 hours that is probably the main mistake. But now I know about swamp coolers so hopefully the next batch will be good. If only I knew what to do with 40 more bad beers.:smack:

Let it sit for awhile. It might improve, if it doesn't give it to college age relatives or drunk uncles. They may b*tch if it is the first beer, but by the 4th they don't complain. Free is the favorite kind of beer for some folks I have found. Even if they do complain, at least you have one more free bottle for the next batch.

 

[notey]

@bondra76 I actually used bottled water entirely for the next batch that I did. Just bottled that one today so I'm anticipating a good turnout.

 

[bondra76]

@bondra76 I actually used bottled water entirely for the next batch that I did. Just bottled that one today so I'm anticipating a good turnout.

Cool man good luck! I have my first bottled water brew fermenting right now as well. It's just a tip I picked up from another user - can't take credit for it myself, but the philosophy is pretty sound to me at least - if you like the taste of the bottled water you use, you're most likely going to like the beer. (and vice versa if you have crummy tasting tap water like I do).

 

[jtratcliff]

Use it for cooking or as a rinse for swmbo's hair in the shower. Some one here on HBT once said that a beer shouldn't go down the drain unless it has passed over a naked woman first!

Unless you need the keg or bottles what's the harm in riding it out?

 

[adixon3]

After 2 weeks if it still taste bad just dump it, there's no reason to drink bad beer if you don't have too, chock it up as a learning mistake and try again. Failure is the best teacher.

 

[mozart4898]

Everyone is saying water, which I would totally agree is a possibility. It's pretty easy to go with RO water bought from a store and generally doesn't cost much (stores like Walmart often have a kiosk where you can refill jugs for an even lower price - I get 8 gallons of RO water for around $3 and know of a place that's kinda out of the way where I could get that much for less than $2...cheap insurance that a batch won't turn out bad because of water).

However, another possibility that I haven't really seen mentioned, other than ferment temperatures, is yeast. I've found if I use S-04 (a popular yeast and one that should work very well in a porter), temp control is desperately important. Anything above low 60s and it's just plain nasty - and I've gotten a metallic flavor from a porter fermented in the high 60s. If you used S-04 and it got too warm, it could be that as well, not just the water. At one time I vowed I'd never touch S-04 again but then I gave it one more shot, keeping it around 62 for the first 3-4 days of fermentation for an IPA, and it turned out great. So be aware if you used that yeast, IMO it HAS to be kept cool, moreso than other dry yeasts.