The First Taste

[Kuebler]

Just racked my first kit brew to a secondary fermenter. Red Ale with Juniper and cinnamon, sorta Christmas Ale. Anyway. Had a taste of my brew and it seemed thin. Will this first taste reflect how the beer will turn out? How will I know if I screwed up? I am guessing it will taste sour? I'd relax and have a homebrew but this is my first batch.

 

[DMartin]

You're fine. Beer always tastes thin when it's flat and warm. Danger zones would be sour like spoiled milk, or bitter like moldy bread.

Trust me on this one: when you f up a batch beyond saving, you'll know. Until then, don't worry so much, it'll still taste like beer no matter how many little mistakes you make.

 

[DannPM]

That's bad news dude.

Lol jk

Wanna reinforce the above, your beer is fine. Relax

 

[Clementine]

After pitching you yeast there is nothing much you can do to your brew to make it better aside from getting the temps right and leaving it alone (stressing the leave it alone), hence the expression relax don't worry have another home brew (RDWHAHB).

I like to taste all my samples of my beers/starters and I get familiar with what is taste like at the different stages so in the future you know if something is wrong. Starters taste like crap as the wort is all oxidized flat warm beer is never great but you will learn the difference between infected and just flat beer so your taste buds will tell you when something is wrong.

Clem

 

[Revvy]

You can't really judge a beer until it's been in the bottle at least 3 weeks. It's not even carbed yet, and that, along with conditioning goes a long way to giving you a true picture of what the beer will be like. Which more than likely will be fine.

It doesn't really matter what a beer tastes like halfway through fermentation, most of mine taste like ****...so I don't bother tasting them at that point. And I suggest to new brewers to do likewise, or else they start threads like this...because it's not halfway through fermentation that is a representation of the finished product....it's after the beer has been carbed and conditioned for about 6 weeks, that is an accurate representation of what a beer tastes like.

Carbonation and conditioning go a long way in a beer's final taste, including hoppiness, taste, aroma, etc. The CO2 lifts the flavors...And bitterness mellows with time.

Read this;

Singljohn hit the nail on the head...The only problem is that you aren't seeing the beer through it's complete process BEFORE calling what is probably just green beer, an off flavor.

It sounds like you are tasting it in the fermenter? If that is the case, do nothing. Because nothing is wrong.

It really is hard to judge a beer until it's been about 6 weeks in the bottle. Just because you taste (or smell) something in primary or secondary DOESN'T mean it will be there when the beer is fully conditioned (that's also the case with kegging too.)

The thing to remember though is that if you are smelling or tasting this during fermentation not to worry. During fermentation all manner of stinky stuff is given off (ask lager brewers about rotten egg/sulphur smells, or Apfelwein makers about "rhino farts,") like we often say, fermentation is often ugly AND stinky and PERFECTLY NORMAL.

It's really only down the line, AFTER the beer has been fermented (and often after it has bottle conditioned even,) that you concern yourself with any flavor issues if they are still there.

I think too many new brewers focus to much on this stuff too early in the beer's journey. And they panic unnecessarily.

A lot of the stuff you smell/taste initially more than likely ends up disappearing either during a long primary/primary & secondary combo, Diacetyl rests and even during bottle conditioning.

If I find a flavor/smell, I usually wait til it's been in the bottle 6 weeks before I try to "diagnose" what went wrong, that way I am sure the beer has passed any window of greenness.

Lagering is a prime example of this. Lager yeast are prone to the production of a lot of byproducts, the most familiar one is sulphur compounds (rhino farts) but in the dark cold of the lagering process, which is at the minimum of a month (I think many homebrewers don't lager long enough) the yeast slowly consumes all those compounds which results in extremely clean tasting beers if done skillfully.

Ales have their own version of this, but it's all the same. Time is your friend.

If you are sampling your beer before you have passed a 'window of greeness" which my experience is about 3-6 weeks in the bottle, then you are more than likely just experiencing an "off flavor" due to the presence of those byproducts (that's what we mean when we say the beer is "green" it's still young and unconditioned.) but once the process is done, over 90% of the time the flavors/smells are gone.

Of the remaining 10%, half of those may still be salvageable through the long time storage that I mention in the Never dump your beer!!! Patience IS a virtue!!! Time heals all things, even beer:

And the remaining 50% of the last 10% are where these tables and lists come into play. To understand what you did wrong, so you can avoid it in the future.

Long story short....I betcha that smell/flavor will be long gone when the beer is carbed and conditioned.

In other words, relax, your beer will be just fine, like 99.5%.

You can find more info on that in here;

Of Patience and Bottle Conditioning.

Just remember it will not be the same beer it is now, and you shouldn't stress what you are tasting right now.

Our beer is more resilient then most new brewers realize, and time can be a big healer. Just read the stories in this thread of mine, and see how many times a beer that someone thought was bad, turned out to be fine weeks later.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/ne...virtue-time-heals-all-things-even-beer-73254/