• Please visit and share your knowledge at our sister communities:
  • If you have not, please join our official Homebrewing Facebook Group!

    Homebrewing Facebook Group

Two hearted ale clone tastes a bit skunky...

Homebrew Talk

Help Support Homebrew Talk:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

hanusbill

Member
Joined
Apr 1, 2013
Messages
8
Reaction score
0
I followed eschatz's recipe from his Bell's two hearted ale clone (https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f69/bells-two-hearted-ale-clone-close-they-come-91488/) except I increased the 2 row to 12 lbs because this was my first all-grain, BIAB batch and I've read about efficiency issues with both first time all-grainers and BIAB. I also upped the mashed at 151 and lost about 2 degrees F over the 60 minute mash. At the end of the boil I hit my OG spot on at 1.065 and pitched a wyeast 1272 starter made by following starter calculations from yeastcalculator.com. I fermented in the primary at 63 deg F for the first 5 days then increased slowing to 70 over the next week or so. I let it condition in the primary for 3 weeks, got at FG of 1.009 then transferred to secondary and dry-hopped with 3 oz of centennial for 5 days, followed by cold crashing and kegging.

I just wanted to give you all of the details before I asked my question. When I tasted the brew before transferring to primary, it tasted awesome. It was so close to the real thing and I was stoked. I did not taste it before transferring to the keg, which I regret, but I kept the secondary in my fridge while dry-hopping and was super careful to keep it out of direct sunlight and even contact with indoor lights while transferring!

It's now been in the keg for almost three weeks and I restrained myself from starting to drink it too early. I wanted the first taste to be magical! However, when I pulled that first pint, it was such a disappointment. It looked great, but had a very noticeable skunky aroma! I was so careful to keep it out of the light so I feel like UV light was not the culprit, but who knows maybe I missed something.

What do you guys think? Is it possible that the last 3 oz of hops I used to dry hop were already bad? I ordered them online from RiteBrew and they were in sealed 1 oz packages. I think the company was brewcraft. Could it just be a little funky tasting because I used a fairly large amount of hops? OR could it be an infection? I brew pretty infrequently and this is my first truly off-putting batch so I'm trying to figure out what could have went awry! Looking forward to your ideas!
 
RDWHAHB. You probably got a bit of trub/settled gunk in that first pull, and the hops are usually pretty wild at first.

I have this recipe (with some hop changes, but I also used 1272) in an almost-empty keg right now, and it took a couple weeks for the hops to mellow out. Just give it a little more time.
 
ive actually pulled quite a few pints from it and still the same flavor. I'll just give it some time but its such a weird flavor. I'm hoping its just a little young still after the dry hopping especially since it went straight to the fridge after 5 days of dry hopping and was never warmed up to condition after. I just wanna drink it NOW!! haha
 
RDWHAHB was the right advice...almost 2 weeks later and it is MUCH better. The 3 oz of dry hopped centennial really did give this beer a wild, skunk-like aroma but it is getting better and better with time and is tasting more and more like i hoped it would. Thanks for easing my worry JonM I think this beer just needs a lot of time to mature before it becomes what its meant to be!
 

Latest posts

Back
Top