Too watery

[FourAmigos]

It opened my first home brew bottle after the recommended bottling period. It tastes watery and had no head at all and seems flat. Did I open it too early or have I gone wrong somewhere else?

 

[Uziyahu]

You have to give us more information than that. What did you brew? What was in it? etc.... Without more information we would just have to guess.

 

[GilSwillBasementBrews]

What was your gravity readings? How long did you wait before trying one? How much priming sugar did you use? What temps did you let it carb at? These would all help diagnose your problem a little easier.

 

[FourAmigos]

Sg reading came in 2 days in a row at 1.009.
It's a coopers lager.
I used the coopers carbonation drops (2 drops as per instructions).
It stayed at about 22-24 degrees centigrade (in the process of moving so it was just stored in my garage).
It has only been a week in the bottle and although the instructions say it is ready to drink after a week it does further comment that they reach a better potential at the 2-3 week mark. I'm thinking I opened it too early but also want to know if it needed to be barrelled longer as it was in the barrel for 7 days before bottling. It was the sixth and seventh day I had two consecutive sg readings. Instructions say it is ready to bottle at sg 1.008 or a consecutive reading over a two day period. Any ideas?

 

[GilSwillBasementBrews]

If it was all grain I'd say next time mash a little higher temp 155F as it will create more unfermentables in your Wort which will give you a higher FG which will result in more body/mouthfeel in the finished beer. As far as barrel aging I haven't tried it so I really can't comment with any kind of background but I vaguely recall a few people's recipes and believe they where aging for 1.5-3months in barrels believe these were high gravity RIS though.

 

[aiptasia]

I'd probably let it sit another full two weeks. Sometimes you have a lot of suspended yeast in the beer and carbonation is fairly fast (ten days or so), and sometimes it takes a little longer. As to the taste and the mouthfeel, it sounds like you used a kit, or just used a limited amount of extract without a lot of adjunct grains. Good news is, it's fixable in subsequent batches. Practice makes perfect, so take heart that you'll get better and better at it the more you do it.

 

[chalmer9]

You can't complain about a beer a week after bottling. It's probably nowhere near ready. Open another in 2 weeks and you'll probably notice a huge difference.

 

[FourAmigos]

Yeah I'm just using beer kits to begin with as I don't have all the appropriate measuring gear yet. I would love some recipes for some boutique style beers though so I can try one of those it's quite limiting with the kits