Weird, bitter aftertaste

[IdiotSlayer]

I just put my Canadian Draught in bottles to carbonate. I tasted a bit of it and it tasted fine at first, but has a very bitter, unpleasant aftertaste. I'm wondering if this will go away as it matures in bottles or if something just went wrong during fermentation. Could it have been the temperature or the type of dextrose I used?

 

[ZombieBrew83]

Hmm, I've had a sour taste on beer when bottling that has mellowed out over a couple weeks but I am not sure about the bitterness. Were your hop additions correct? Was the AA% in your hops the same as the recipe?

Either way, it will most likely smooth out over time.

 

[homebrewdad]

I have tasted similar bitter aftertastes - and had them go away.

Realize that you are tasting uncarbonated, green beer. Give it time and let it mature before you start worrying, or worse, trying to diagnose an issue that may not even exist.

 

[IdiotSlayer]

Hmm, I've had a sour taste on beer when bottling that has mellowed out over a couple weeks but I am not sure about the bitterness. Were your hop additions correct? Was the AA% in your hops the same as the recipe?

Either way, it will most likely smooth out over time.

I didn't put in any additions, I made it standard from a kit so it's just the wort and dextrose. I would actually say it tastes more sour than bitter if you associate bitter with hops, but in any case it tastes off. It wouldn't be contaminated, would it? I've taken lots of precautions to prevent that but you never know.

The only thing I can think of that may have gone wrong is that ambient temperature during primary fermentation was inconsistent because we got a sudden heat wave, so the temperature in my room was up for a day or two. Would that account for this? I'm hoping it just needs to mellow in bottles.

 

[MDB]

No expert but there is not much you can do now anyway, let it ride and it will likely get better. My first batch had a similar taste. I gave up waiting after 3 weeks in the bottles and just started drinking it. Finished the 2 cases probably 3 weeks later and by golly that last six tasted pretty good.

 

[homebrewdad]

IdiotSlayer - seriously, relax.

We get dozens of these posts every week from people who sample beers from their fermenters, from their bottling buckets, and it's always the same thing:

OP: Oh noes! My beer tastes bad!

"Helpful" poster #1: Quick, let me help! What was your process? If you brewed under a new moon, you need to sacrifice three goats and one chicken NOW.

"Helpful" poster #2: Who cares about the process? What was the recipe? If you put more than six grams of eye of newt in the beer, it's ruined.

"Helpful" poster #3: You have a bitter taste? I think that is an infection. Or perhaps it could be moonshade. Either way, you're going to have to dump the batch.

You know what? 99% of the time, allowing the beer to carb up fixes the problem. Flat, warm, green beer does NOT taste like aged, carbonated beer. I always cringe when I see people giving the "helpful" advice to sample beer over and over until it's ready... many times, unfinsihed beer is flawed or even plain old gross.

Give it at least three weeks in the bottle at 70 degrees, then chill a couple in the fridge for two days. If it still has a bitter aftertaste... give it a couple more weeks. I will be stunned if the issues don't drastically improve.


Example #1: My Yorkshire brown ale was good after three weeks in bottles, though it had a tad bit of an off flavor. A couple weeks improved it. Once it hit four months in bottles, it became borderline amazing.

Example #2: My Belgian blonde ale had a bitter, boozy finish after four weeks in bottles (this was an 8.4% ABV brew). Two weeks later, the booziness was gone, and the bitter was greatly reduced. I plan to try it in two more weeks, and expect it will be excellent.


Relax. Quit trying to figure out what you did wrong. Odds are superb that the ONLY serious error you made was in drinking green beer and expecting it to taste great.

 

[IdiotSlayer]

I wish you'd posted that before I killed my best three goats.

 

[iambeer]

We get dozens of these posts every week from people who sample beers from their fermenters, from their bottling buckets, and it's always the same thing...

haha... But to me it always looks like this:

OP: Oh noes! My beer tastes bad!

"Helpful" poster #1: What was your process? It's probably fine, proceed.

"Helpful" poster #2: What was the recipe? It's probably fine, proceed.

"Helpful" poster #3: I think that is an infection. It's probably fine, proceed.

 

[progmac]

my beers generally taste more or less the same at bottling (3 weeks in primary) as after conditioning. after all, most breweries force carbonate and serve in just a few weeks. but one beer i made is an exception, the one i just drank last night. it tasted unpleasant at bottling (bitter nut aftertaste) and is now one of my favorites. so don't worry...yet

 

[MDB]

Oh crap, I brewed under the new moon and I'm fresh out of goats!

 

[homebrewdad]

I wish you'd posted that before I killed my best three goats.

Sorry, man. I tried to keep an eye on the thread. I don't see a menion of the chicken, though... that's something, right?



The thing is - yeah, you may have a minor flaw or three. MOST minor flaws (if they even exist to begin with), will improve with age - there's a huge, long thread about this very subject. Heck, even some major flaws (the kind that render a beer undrinkable) are fixed with time. Yeast are resilient buggers who know how to make beer - let them.

I'm not saying that everything gets better with time, but way more times than not, beer that people worry about turns out somewhere between drinkable to outstanding.

Check back in threeish weeks and let us know how the beer is.

 

[IdiotSlayer]

Well thank you everybody. I figured I was just worrying needlessly, just wanted to have that confirmed. This is my first batch, after all. I'm gonna start brewing again this Wednesday so there will be a whole lot of needless freaking out to come.

 

[homebrewdad]

Well thank you everybody. I figured I was just worrying needlessly, just wanted to have that confirmed. This is my first batch, after all. I'm gonna start brewing again this Wednesday so there will be a whole lot of needless freaking out to come.

Cool. You get better by doing, right?

Keep notes of what you are doing ( I added this at X minutes, substituted this ingredient, etc) so that you have something to refer to in the future.

And don't worry - needless freaking out is why we have a beginner's board. I've made use of it, myself!

 

[ChrisMoss]

IdiotSlayer - seriously, relax.



We get dozens of these posts every week from people who sample beers from their fermenters, from their bottling buckets, and it's always the same thing:







You know what? 99% of the time, allowing the beer to carb up fixes the problem. Flat, warm, green beer does NOT taste like aged, carbonated beer. I always cringe when I see people giving the "helpful" advice to sample beer over and over until it's ready... many times, unfinsihed beer is flawed or even plain old gross.



Give it at least three weeks in the bottle at 70 degrees, then chill a couple in the fridge for two days. If it still has a bitter aftertaste... give it a couple more weeks. I will be stunned if the issues don't drastically improve.





Example #1: My Yorkshire brown ale was good after three weeks in bottles, though it had a tad bit of an off flavor. A couple weeks improved it. Once it hit four months in bottles, it became borderline amazing.



Example #2: My Belgian blonde ale had a bitter, boozy finish after four weeks in bottles (this was an 8.4% ABV brew). Two weeks later, the booziness was gone, and the bitter was greatly reduced. I plan to try it in two more weeks, and expect it will be excellent.





Relax. Quit trying to figure out what you did wrong. Odds are superb that the ONLY serious error you made was in drinking green beer and expecting it to taste great.

Just came across this thread after tasting my ipa which has an unpleasant bitter aftertaste.

I won't detail the recipe but it's all grain, should be 60IBU, the aroma is good, hop flavour is great and bitterness (similar to a standard ipa) follows the main flavours and is about right.

After that, once you've swallowed, I get a really unpleasant bitter aftertaste. It's actually like a much milder version of a taste I've had in 3 old batches that I think we're skunked (I have brewed an ipa which was great in between).

At 2 weeks in the bottle it tasted grim. At 4 weeks (today) it was about half, but still very much there. Obviously I'll leave it another 4-6 weeks, but wondered what could have caused it - seeing as my last ipa turned out great!

Would appreciate any advice!

Cheers

Chris

 

[bmacafee]

I once made a 5 gal batch of apricot creme ale that had a bitter aftertaste after a couple of weeks conditioning in bottles. I tried it again after another week or two and it was still there. It was still present after a couple of months and still so after around 6 months. I assumed I would have to dump the entire batch but didn't have the time or desire to start opening and pouring so I left them in my basement. The unopened bottles sat for over a year. At that time I was about to move and wanted to keep my bottles but didn't have time to empty them so I moved them to my new home. The bottles sat in a hot storage building all summer and when I finally decided to empty the bottles to prepare for a new brew, I decided to chill one and see what it tasted like. The beer had a nice head and good carbonation still. I tasted it and it was wonderful. I had a friend who judges home-brew competitions try it (without me sharing the beer's background of course) and he said it was one of the most balanced uses of fruit in a beer that he's had. Needless to say he was quite surprised when I told him how long the beer had been aging.

Moral? If a beer tastes a bit off give it more time. You never know what you could end up with!