Taste In Fermenter Vs Bottle

[Ash in Perth]

Has any noticed how beer tastes better straight from primary or secondary (once at least close to final gravity) than it does once bottled? im tempeted to stop bottling and jsut serve from the fermenter. Do kegs solve this issue?

Is this from different flavours being formed when bottle conditioning or do i just think it tastes better because im so eager for it to be ready?

Cheers

 

[matti]

If you bottle correctly it should not differ.
Perhaps you don't let it age in bottle long enough?
R u bulk priming? What do u use to prime with?
I bulk prime with dextrose diluted in 350 ml preboiled water ensuring no aeration of beers. I fill approximately eight to ten sterile bottles and leave lids loose on before capping ensuring all air is gone before capping.
Most bottled beer is not pallatable until at least six week. I find the taste best 6-8 weeks for beer mildly hopped and 12-16 weeks for heavily hopped beer. The colder aging temp the better
Matti

 

[Ash in Perth]

Cheers. I was thinking oxygen getting into the beer when bottling might be a problem. I dont bulk prime because its more things to clean and sterilize and another racking would possibly result in as much oxygen getting into the beer as adding sugar (i use dextrose) to each bottle.

Your right about the aging, i usually leave my beers at least a month before chucking a few in the fridge. I wouldnt say its not palatable before that though.

Cheers, Ash

 

[hughman666]

i have to say that kegging definitely accelerates the rate at which your beer becomes acceptable, as opposed to bottling. with forced carbonation (ross method) and an overnight chill, the results are great within 24 hrs. they do improve with age, but you can still get away with the 24hr timeframe.

carbonation with co2 is much cleaner and less intrusive to the brew than priming in bottles, as you're not adding another ingredient, just bubbles.

 

[Ash in Perth]

I guess kegging is the next step then once if finished the Stainless system.

 

[hughman666]

kegging is the ducks nuts

 

[jayse]

snipped>

carbonation with co2 is much cleaner and less intrusive to the brew than priming in bottles, as you're not adding another ingredient, just bubbles.

I don't think this is quite accurate in some ways esspecially when your cranking the pressure in the keg up high enough to fully inflate a light truck tyre and shaking the bejeesus out of it. I'am pretty sure most professionals will tell you a natural carbonation is much better on your beer. It has even been argueed in some circles that this rather heavy handed force carbonation can strip some of the volatile hop aroma from the beer. Plus it can also be possible to give a carbonic acid 'bite' to the beer with this miss treatment. I'am not gunna argue between natural carbonation and bottled Co2 if done correctly but there is certainly a valid arguement in the very heavy handed force carbonation not being the best proceedure. Anyway thats getting away from the question at hand.

As far as the original question there may be a couple issues that need further inspection and a little more information needed to say for sure what the problem is. I'am sure as your get more experienced everything will start to fall into place nicely. It sounds like your pretty happy with your beer and have just found a little tid bit to improve upon, the good brewers around perth will happily pick out any problems with the beer if there are any such as oxidised compounds. It may simply be a case of most beer is best fresh and a couple months down the track its already been in its prime and its starting to fade away.

On first thought I would have to say just be more pedantic with your bottling and the way the bottles are treated during priming and being stored afterwards. Beer to be at its very best should be stored cool, not in the boot of your car or anything


Happy brewing.
Jayse

 

[colinw]

I do notice subtle differences between my beers between keg and bottle, but almost always they are immediately recognisable as the same beer.

Sometimes you do get noticeable differences, eg. with one beer I kegged recently that had a fair whack of munich malt in it the bottled beer displays more of that "nutty" munich malt flavour than the kegged beer does.

 

[Ross]

I used to bottle 6 beers from every brew & keg the rest - I can honestly say I've ALWAYS been happier with the kegged one. Maybe I've not been as strict with temp control as I should once bottled, but I now don't bother bottling any at all - I'm keen to try naturally conditioning in the keg though, as a "real" ale takes a lot of beating...

cheers Ross

 

[Ash in Perth]

Im very happy with most of my beers, but mostly with the pale ones, they do loose a bit going into the bottle. They seem to jsut become 1 flavour rather than the hops, malts and yeast notes being sepearate on the palate if this makes sense.

Im going to try bulk priming my next brew and im using polyclar aswell so maybe this will sort out a couple of small issues.

Cheers, Ash

 

[em1998]

I think you might find when your priming you can get different tastes depending on the type of method / product you are using to prime the bottle.

 

[beerinator]

This wouldnt have anything to do with the temperature when you're tasting from the fermenter vs a cold bottle of beer? Try leaving a bottle out of the fridge to warm up a bit then see if it tastes better.

 

[Ash in Perth]

I usually enjoy my beers warmer than fridge temp but ill try one at room temp and see what its like