Homebrew can end up better than beer in pubs, but it is important to understand what you created at each stage of brewing, otherwise bottling bad beer will result in wasted bottles, time, and energy.
On the other hand, judging too quickly may deceive you into thinking the beer has failed, while it may end up great with some extra conditioning time.
My beers used to taste absolutely terrible a week after bottling, but then they dramatically improved in a second week. It’s possible that only 7 days make a difference between clumsy, tasteless liquid into a wonderful brew worthy of God’s attention.
In this short guide, we are going to see what the beer should taste like before the bottling and after the bottling.
Beginning: The taste of wort
The wort should always be very sweet!
Before you start to ferment your wort, your wort is full of sugars that need to be converted to alcohol.
The taste of malts hops and other special ingredients should also leave a strong taste on your palate.
Simply put, there’s not much that can go wrong at this stage outside of measuring mistakes, missed ingredients, or incomplete processes. Well, that sounds like you have to be careful, but at least you don’t worry about infection when things are boiling hot!
What should beer taste like before bottling? ( and after primary fermentation)
This process of primary fermentation may take some time to kick in and complete depending on certain factors like yeast type and temperature, so it could be less than 7 days or sometimes a couple of weeks.
When you taste the beer after primary fermentation, it should be mostly flat and you shouldn’t feel any significant sweetness. Additionally, you may feel the taste of alcohol and minor tones from the hops and other ingredients.
The flatter it is, the better it is at this stage. However, any dull taste is acceptable but the wort should not feel sweet nor have the sulfuric, vinegar-like taste.
If it’s sweet and you haven’t planned it, it means that probably the yeast didn’t do its job at converting sugars into alcohol. It’s either due to incomplete fermentation or you killed the yeast somehow.
If it tastes sulfuric and vinegar-like, it means the wort’s been contaminated and you have a problem.
However, it does not mean that the beer will be undrinkable, based on the level of infection it can either be completely off-tasting or it can only have shades of the off-taste. In the latter case, the beer won’t be as good as usual, but it might still be enjoyable. If you suspect serious off-flavors in your beer refer to my off-taste article which explains what could go wrong and how to fix it.
What to do if the beer tastes bad before bottling?
In the case of sulfuric, meaty, vinegar-like taste
Any of these off-flavors are not welcomed and if you can spot them in a beer, it is a bad sign. Your beer is infected and spoiled and there’s not much you can do to save it. However, if there are only minor off-flavors you can mask them with the addition of hops or strong spices you can add dry to the wort/beer.
In most cases, the bad flavors come from poor sanitation, but they can also come as a result of sunlight exposure or high temperatures! There’s no way that beer gets spoiled if everything is properly taken care of!
In case you can taste the sweetness
If you taste sweetness in your beer after primary fermentation it means there are still unprocessed sugars in it. If this is intentional, the recipe calls for a sweeter brew and the yeast has eaten most of the sugar and stopped when it couldn’t eat complex sugars or after reaching attenuation due to high ABV percentage.
If it is unintended and the beer doesn’t have off-flavors besides sweetness, you somehow killed the yeast or put it into a dormant state. You can continue fermentation by exposing the dormant yeast in the wort to the heat (room temperature or slightly above) and reactivate it. If it’s dead, you will have to use new yeast and re-pitch it.
Conditioning weeks
Once you bottle or keg your beer, it should go through a phase of conditioning. During this time your beer will develop the real beer taste, so it’s essential that you do not expect a good beer before this phase is complete.
For instance, after the first week, the beer may taste acceptable, but it will only taste fine after another week and only taste great after another two weeks or so.
Low-ABV beers generally condition less than high-ABV beers. So, some 4.2% ABV ale will be good after two weeks and great after 6 weeks, while similar 11% ale (like Russian Imperial stout) will be great only after 3 to 6 months.
Let’s say you are brewing around 5.0 % ABV beer, it will be fully ready in a matter of weeks. I will take this type of ABV beer as an example.
Week 1.
Straight after bottling, week 1. of conditioning begins. Unless you force carbonize it (not a thing beginners do, don’t worry about it), you will add some priming sugar and condition them at room temperature for 10 days or a bit longer.
The beer is just bottled and It shouldn’t taste like beer at all. At the end of the first week, It will start to catch up with the flavors and some carbonation will kick in but it is still too soon to call it a beer.
Week 2.
At the end of week 2. (or a few days earlier if you are really excited to try your brew) you can put some bottles in the fridge for a minimum of 64 hours and open a bottle (or wait for a full 7 days+). It should taste beerish, but you should have a bit more patience.
This means that after proper carbonation of either full 14 days or a few days less at room temperature, the bottles are ready to continue with conditioning in the fridge or any cold, fridge-like place.
Week 3+.
At the end of week 3, it means your beer has been in the fridge for 7 days and it should be clear and the Co2 should form nicely once you open it.
The beer should taste fine and you can enjoy your beer with friends and family. However, it should still get better after that, so give it another week or two and you will have a complete beer where some flavors will come out unexpectedly.
At the end of this stage, you should know whether the beer will be good or bad because if it tastes really bad it is either going to stay that way or you should be back after another week or so to give it a taste and write down the improvements.
The longer beer conditions, the better it gets
If the beer is good at some stage, it can only get better in weeks to come. How big of a difference will it be, greatly depends on the beer you are brewing and the recipe you used.
However, most beers get better with time and if you are brewing high ABV beers, time will be the most decisive factor in beer taste.
With more time, you can spot tones you couldn’t spot before and only a couple of weeks can mean a game-breaking difference.
Carbonation is best done at room temperature because it helps the yeast to eat priming sugar, but it can condition itself even at colder temperatures while in the fridge.
Tip: Each time you brew a new batch, leave a bottle or two somewhere hidden and forget about it. After a couple of weeks or months try it again and see the difference the conditioning did to it. This will help you realize what potential is hidden within each beer and make you a better homebrewer.
Should you taste beer during fermentation?
Tasting beer during primary fermentation is recommended only if you are taking gravity readings or once you suspect the fermentation is complete. I like to taste it before bottling just to see whether it’s infected or healthy, so I do not waste my bottles if it is terrible.
There’s no point in regularly taking samples while it ferments, so better leave the fermentation at peace!
During (optional) secondary fermentation you can taste the beer to see how clear it is and do you feel sediment, but yet again there’s not much point in this and you could simply observe it in a beaker and put it back.