Seven days in the bottles, at 73F, and the IPA, has carbonated nicely. I feel no pressure differences between the bottles primed with corn sugar and table sugar. Also the clarity, of the IPA, has come though showing very little of the haze, which it showed before.
Since the carbonation level is good I have placed one primed corn sugar bottle and one primed table sugar bottle in the refrigerator, for a one week tasting.
I hope youāve found your problemā¦ You have all your ducks in a rowā¦ Hope you knowā¦ Weāre rooting for you! Sneezles61
Thanks, keeping my fingers crossed.
Just scanned through this thread pretty quickly and maybe I missed something but has the OP addressed whether heās treated his tap water for chlorine/chloramines?
This IPA is brewed using distilled water vs the filtered water I used in previous batches.
Also to recap the OP (who is doc280) made successful batches before using Mr.Beer kits which are generally prehopped LME recipes. He is just having problems with NB kits
This is very much true, with the best being my very first batch, a Churchill Brown Ale. The worst being an American Lager, which I am sure got to warm during fermentation.
On the Mr. Beer forum I ask if hopped malted extract was less susceptible to oxidation than using gains, malted extract and pellet hops and the answer I received was āNOā.
Would explain a lot through.
Still hoping the bottling wand is the answer.
48 hours in the refrigerator, finished mowing the lawn and Formula One qualifying starting, need a beer. A nice IPA or pale ale with a citrus note would be great, so I poured the bottle primed with table sugar into a chilled glass.
This is the one week in the bottle tasting and this is what I have.
The smell is clean with hop and citrus, zero off smells.
The appearance is a little darker than I expected and it may have just a touch of chill haze, but overall I am not complaining. I have been reading about late extract additions, which should lighten the color and a cold crash may help with the chill haze.
Carbonation is, to me, perfect and nothing to change here.
Taste, first I would not call this an IPA, but a pale ale and do not get me wrong this is not a bad thing. It has a very nice mid-range bitterness, it is light but with a pop of citrusā¦more specific grapefruitā¦there is a pop of grapefruit. There are zero off flavors, sorry getting excited here, but this has to be the most perfect summer time, hot weather beer I have ever had. This is the beer I want when I am at the ballpark watching nine innings in the dog days of August.
I know there is the chance they may get better with a little age??? I really think that is going to be a hard one to do. There is a chance that awful off favor takes over and I loose the whole batch. Question is how many should I throw in the refrigerator?
Niiiccceee!! They will definitely change with age but not too drastically and, from my experience, not in a bad way. We even forgot one Chinook IPA for over a year and it was fantastic. As for how many into the fridge? How many do you want to drink and how much room do you have? 
In a ll seriousness, congrats on the success and making yourself a fine beer!
Thanks, so far so good.
Ok, really who can stop at one? Yes I had to do it, I had to open the bottle primed with corn sugar and drink it too. Now I know everything I have been told and read says there will be no difference between the table sugar and corn sugar, however in the one week tasting I have to say there is. The corn sugar primed bottle is little more bitter, not bad, but I do prefer the table sugar primed bottle better at this point.
Your fridge looked empty so throw some more in. Keep some out however for our experimental purposes.
And congrats
Yes, congratulations for a successful brew! APA-IPA either wayā¦ That does look like a very tasty pintā¦ Is kegging in your future? Sneezles61
Looks good!
So the only difference in this batch was the water?
Water, sanitizer, no cold crash and used a bottling wand.
No I am not looking at kegging. I would really like to perfect the art of 5 gallon extract brewing. I like being able to brew in the kitchen and fermentation and bottle conditioning in the man cave. Otherwise I like the small footprint my brew operation has at the moment.
I am still keeping my fingers crossed this is just week one in the bottle.
Iām late to the game on this thread. Not sure why I didnāt see it before but hereās my 2 cents.
The fact that the off flavor developed after time in the bottle points to a sanitation issue which you probably resolved by using star san. My guess is the metallic flavor was from your city water which probably had chlormines that you werenāt neutralizing. If you continue to brew extract batches using distilled water is your best bet as advised above.
As noted previously in the thread hops can produce a grassy flavor when stale but youāre using them pretty quickly. If you store hops for more than a few weeks itās best to freeze them. I buy hops by the pound so after I open a bag I vacuum seal them and freeze them until next use. They last a LONG time like that.
Many times new brewers just havenāt developed the palate to recognize subtle off flavors and also drink their product pretty quickly since they have lower inventory. As you produce more you have them around longer and your palate becomes more refined so you begin to pick up on flavors you may not have noticed before while the beer also ages longer providing the chance for infections to grow before consumption.
Not sure how you were bottling before but I know oxidation was mentioned in the thread. It could be an issue but you donāt mention off flavors typically attributed to oxidation, like rubber, bandaid, cardboard, etc. So I doubt thatās the source of the flavors you did describe.
Glad this most recent beer has turned out well. Itās always satisfying to resolve an issue and improve your brewing expertise. We learn with each batch. Well done @doc280 !
Beer looks great and glad you resolved your problem. The guys on here are an awesome bunch and have tons of knowledge (and opinions) and have helped me out numerous times. Most of us started out just as you did @doc280 and with a little research, experimentation, upgraded equipment and positive reinforcement from the wife, weāre now elbow deep in a hobby that we obsess with and love sharing our knowledge and past experiences with. Cheers to you and good luck on the next batch!
My neighbor brewed a bad batch of beer awhile back and I told him that it tasted bad (funky taste) and he agreed and then tossed it. We both keg our beers these days. He taught me how to brew several years ago. He is very good on sanitizing everything and following good brewing rules. We both agree, you cannot serve your friends ābad beerā.
We later brewed a 10 gallon batch of a Rye IPA in my garage and split it (WLP001 yeast). I dry hopped with Centennial and he with Cascade. I like his better, he likes mine better. A good batch.
Then we brewed again, I made a 10 gallon Vienna IPA and he brewed a 5 gallon batch of a Brown ale (with dry yeast pack, I need to ask him what he used). It kind of has the same funkiness of the first beer I was talking about.
Other than the mashing profiles use (I moved on to 10 gallons and HERMS), we brew the same.
We learn from each other these days.
Because of my bad experiences with the randomness of dry yeast packs (and bottling with priming sugar) , I use exclusively WLP001 for IPAs, Stouts and Porters (not wanting to add any Yeast flavor contributions, just ferment the wort pleaseā¦). I use starters to grow the yeast for 10 gallons. One pack is fine for our gravity of 5 gallon batches. Local brew store frequently gives us the yeast for free as part of the membership.
What do we do different?
He tends to use various yeast packs, never a yeast starter, never re-hydrating the yeast.
The yeast used and preparation of that I am convince is one of the biggest causes of bad beer.
With the Kama Citra IPA still tasting great and the offer of free shipping, from NB, I have ordered a new kit. I have Nut Brown Ale, on the way, which happens to be the first failure I had. A true test of my new brewing ways and techniques.
