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Hi, I've just made my first extract brew, and I thought all was going well, however I decided to have a taste of the beer right after transferring from the pot and pitching the rehydrated yeast.

The taste was not good. At all. It was horrible.

Basically, will this be representative of the finished beer? How does fermentation affect the taste?

Have I just wasted my afternoon by brewing the worlds worst beer? It just tasted like I'd added 300 times more bittering hops than I was supposed to.

I did try to strain it, however its possible that some of the trub made it into the Fermenter, I'm hoping I got a shit of that and when it all settles to the bottom it will taste better.

I used mosaic hops, 35g at 60min,20g at 15 min, 20g at 0min.

Apologies, I accidentally swore in my initial post, it was meant to read "a shot".

Hey man, how are ya ?
What was your final volume ?
I always found that the wort tastes pretty bitter at first, but fermentation seems to settle it all down.
Did you take detailed notes on your brew day ? It always helps to go back to them and see what you may/may not have done.

Maybe put up your ingredients and procedure.

If it turns out too bitter it may be a good one to drink and learn for next time, if its the worst beer in the world, as you put it, well then you might be up "shot creek" !!

CF

I don't have access to my computer to give you figures and it would depend on what the rest of your recipe was , mosaic is a high aa hop and with 35g for 60 minutes and then another 20 min addition you can expect a big ibu count. Depends on what malt you used as to if this balances I guess.

Ball park ibu (internaltional bittering units) is 65-70. Assuming a light malt extract 23 litre batch.

This is a link I just found that will give you an IDE of beer styles and their ibu's
http://www.brewersfriend.com/2009/01/24 ... ess-range/

Hey, thanks for the replies. It is a 22L batch, I generally quite like very bitter ales, sone if the American IPA's cone to mind. This certainly was on a different level. Assuming an IBU of 65-70, how does that rank, bloody bitter?

Sorry for the spelling, I'm on a phone and am obviously not proof reading.

It's surely up there. But it's in the fermenter now so ferment it, bottle it and give it a crack. Worst case scenario you have beer to offer the inlaws when they come over

What extract did you use and how much? What was the volume of your boil and how much extract did you add to the boil?

I used briess amber extract, and light pilsen extract. I booked about 11L and put in approximately half the malt, so about 750gm of each extract.

Sounds like a lot of hops for 11L dude.
You may have used too much !

CrookedFingers wrote:Sounds like a lot of hops for 11L dude.
You may have used too much !

Sorry, I just realised you had an 11L boil.
But When I say that, I mean your brew may not be balanced enough to support the high IBU's. Sounds like you may have needed more malts to go with the bitterness.

But I may be wrong.
It's kinda early, brain not worky too good !

Yep, an 11L boil with 1.5kg malt, and I added the remaining 1.5kg at the end of the boil. So 3kg of malt all up. Bugger. Is adding more water a really bad idea? Its on its third day of fermenting. Is it likely to mellow during fermentation and bottling?

I wouldn't add water man.
Once it is done I would possibly make shandys out if it !!
It still light be an ok beer, just very bitter !!

Since it has been in the fermenter for a few days now, I guess it's best left alone.

I would strongly recommend getting some brewing software and doing a bit more research into bittering and aroma hops

Brewmate is free I believe
http://www.brewmate.net/

BeerSmith is about $30ish
http://beersmith.com/

It takes the guess work out and allows you to at least get your beers into the ball park bitterness of the style you are after,

Let us know how the beer ends up

Thanks all, I'll report back after three weeks of bottling.

I wouldn't worry about it at this stage.

Let your beer fully ferment out, and don't be in a rush to bottle it. Giving it time will settle out a lot of the proteins and other trub, which no doubt are contributing to the less than ideal taste now.

Once you've bottled it, give it at least a month to mature in the bottle. You will find a lot of the bitterness will smooth out, and it won't be anywhere near as obvious as it is now.

I've brewed AIPA's with over 80 IBU, and they've been fine.

I agree with the recommendation to use some brewing software to help you design future recipes.