What to Expect when Sampling Pre-keg

[howabouttheiris]

Question for the keggers out there.....

Brewed my 1st batch (Coopers Canadian Blonde) to recipe, all but 2L fit into the keg. It went into a 2L plastic pop bottle for a quick chill and a taste test.

My observations are as follows....

1) I was quite surprised at the strength of the bitter taste. I suspected a much more smooth beer vs a bitter. (caution I am a Keiths IPA drinker normally, so use that to gauge what I call bitter) Will this fade some with aging?

2) It had a significant water taste as the after taste. Numbers showed that it should have been about 4.5%. It had the finish of Kool-aid. I attribute this to the fact that there was no carbonation. Will this be rectified by carbonation?

I know I should wait and see, but I am far too eager to get the pipeline started.

 

[malkore]

young beer is good to taste, but its immature and the lack of carbonation will definitely cause a loss of flavor and especially body.

the hops will mellow a little bit as well.

the coopers kits are not going to make amazing beer without heavy modification (like, no corn sugar in primary..use DME instead). but, it IS beer.

 

[howabouttheiris]

Answers to my own questions after 1 week in the keg (rapid artificial carb method)

1. Will the bitter settle?

Nope. Need to malt the next one up to balance it out better. Premalted extract + sugar is not a recipe to repeat.

2. Will CO2 fix the Koolaid texture?

Yup. carbonation cleaned up the finish nicely. Not a bad beer in the end.


I believe I now have a much better understanding of what to expect when sampling out of secondary, and can probably predict my results better for having tried and attempted to completely critique the miserable flat watery urine starting state of the beer.