General Category > Extract/Partial Mash Brewing
Why does all my beer taste the same?
awfenske:
I started brewing recently and have made three batches from extract kits (details below). I had a little experience before this in helping my dad make mead and wine, so I at least had a clue when I started. I sanitized and followed all directions religiously, and I ended up with three beers that should taste pretty different from each other but all taste incredibly similar. There are no off-flavors. The aroma is very nice on all of them, and the color, head, etc. all look right. OG and FG were exactly where the instructions specified. But they all have a very thin flavor profile and/or seem overcarbonated, with only subtle notes of the beer's intended flavor.
#1) Brewer's Best Scottish Ale, OG 1.034, boil volume 2.5gal
#2) Midwest Supplies Hex Nut Brown Ale, OG 1.043, boil volume 5gal
#3) Midwest Supplies Irish Stout, OG 1.047, boil volume 3gal
After the first one came out thin but with everything else seemingly on-target, I figured I needed to steep the specialty grains for longer (30 minutes on batches 2 and 3 compared to 20 on batch 1), which resulted in little to no improvement. All three seemed to have a much fuller flavor just before bottling compared to after bottle conditioning - going into the bottles each batch tasted great, and all three notably different from each other as they should be, but after 2 weeks in the bottle they all taste very similar and seem to have lost their flavor. There might be a tiny improvement in the flavor after extra time in the bottles (a month or two), but it's small enough that I could just be fooling myself.
I'm using secondary fermentation (roughly a week in the primary and a week in the secondary), bottle conditioning with the 3/4 cup of priming sugar that is included in the kits, and the fermentation/carbonation temperature is around 65F.
I'm stumped.
ocddot:
What yeast are you using?
jeremy0209:
Sounds like they're overcarbed. Overcarbing can make your beer seem thin. In my experience, the 3/4 cup of priming sugar that they include with those kits is way too much. I generally go for about 4 oz of priming sugar per 5 gallons. I use a calculator like this one (http://www.brewblogger.net/index.php?page=tools§ion=sugar) to determine exactly how much sugar to use. I also prefer to weigh my sugar instead of measuring it. I feel it's more consistent. Hope this helps.
mtnrockhopper:
So they tasted different in the bottling bucket but are now similar out of the bottle? The only thing I can think of is that overcarbonation is blowing out many of the aromatics that would distinguish them. It's a shot in the dark without tasting them though. Those recipes do have some similarities - at least, they are more similar than if a stout and IPA came out the same. They are all malt forward.
AmandaK:
Sounds overcarbed. 3/4 cup is almost always too much sugar - especially for a Scottish ale or Irish Stout. I usually carb those around 2 volumes, whereas 3/4 cup is verging on 3 volumes (the standard for, say, a hefewiezen).
Here's a quick & easy priming sugar calculator: http://www.northernbrewer.com/priming-sugar-calculator/
Also, using weight instead of volume is much more consistent.
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