To make a long story short, I was over-ambitious about my first batch of beer and went for barleywine. I added more yeast at bottling, as per the recipe, however I did not know at the time that I had under-pitched the first addition of yeast (one pack of Wyeast 1056). To make matters worse, I cracked my hydrometer at bottling time and have no idea what my FG was (don't worry, my brewing noobness has improved greatly since then).
At the end of June, I asked a brewer teaching an all-grain class how badly I had screwed up. He said to put one in the fridge for 2 weeks, try it, and if it tasted phenolic I might want to let it age a little longer. I did this, and it tasted good, but it did have that "hot" taste he told me to look for, so I let the aging continue.
This week I put another in the fridge, tasted it, and it tasted "off." Not quite sure how to describe it other than an unpleasant aftertaste. At this point, it has had 3 months of primary/secondary and about 3 months of bottle conditioning. I'm disappointed, because it was totally drinkable 3 weeks ago and now I am worried that if the alcohol content was not high enough, continued aging was a bad choice. Thoughts?