About three weeks ago I brewed a porter with my girlfriend. We made a 4 gallon batch and got 39 and 1/2 bottles worth of beer. We decided to drink the 1/2 bottle fresh and we were both surprised how good this beer had turned out. It tasted strongly of roasted malt and chocolate, precisely what we wanted. We had high hopes for this beer. After bottle conditioning for 2 weeks we cracked open a full bottle. To our chagrin the flavor had changed radically. It lost that roasty flavor and became cloyingly sweet. I don’t know why this happened. We used the standard 3/4 cups corn sugar for priming. Any theories on what happened?
Recipe info?
how was the carbonation level on the new bottle?
how did you mix the sugar in prior to bottling?
sigh… 2 weeks is not enough time… let it sit at least 2 more weeks before you crack another one open… if you can muster up the patience, wait 6 more weeks… it will be worth the wait. Porters in my experience take longer to ‘mature’ when bottled.
I ask that too. When that happened to me, I had not mixed my priming sugar well. :-[ I either had really sweet bottles with carbonation, or flat bottles that tasted like the beer did at bottling. Thankfully I didn’t get any gushers. You might be careful opening other bottles if you didn’t make sure to mix your priming sugar in well.
+1
Two weeks is about the bare minimum for carbonation, but I find the flavors will develop better if you give it more time.
If this was a kit beer, you didn’t follow the instructions that came with it did you? 