'That' homebrew taste... what is it?

[Rolfster]

If your wanting to transport beers a good distance to say a party...the easiest method is to drink it first, go to the party taking a couple of dozen empty Fos***r or similar bottles,cans whatever.
On arrival visit the toilet refill your empty bottles and tell them that your brew was not ready so you bought at great expence some bottles...... :party: :party:

Everyones a winner.

:sick: :sick:

 

[midnight rider]

I've only ever made up 7 batches in my life (Woodforde's Wherry currently on the go) so take this with extreme caution...

It's the water. I use 'value' bottled water from tesco (17p for 2 litres) and don't get the homebrew taste.

 

[calumscott]

It's not the water.

I live in one of the hardest, most heavy chloramine usage areas in the country.

When I was brewing kits I didn't even bother with camden tablets.

I only ever used dextrose, DME or LME.

I never had any appreciable THBT.

Now I brew AG the only thing I do to the water is chuck in a camden tablet overnight before the brewday.

 

[FuzzySteve]

My experience of the twang only seemed to come from kits, although I do add a campden to my HLT the night before.

My belief (read; excuse) for going all-grain was to remove the home brew taste by having total control over the ingredients and brewing process. I guess I'll never really know if it was my inexperience with using kits or not.

 

[Fore]

Probably a few different factors, but I side with those who think time plays the biggest role. Yes some kits will be better than others, and some water will be better than others, but I'm sure many of us are guilty of drinking too soon after kegging.

I recently sampled a Ruby Red almost every day after kegging. Initially the homebrew taste was strong, but it quickly subsided and after 2 weeks that twang was almost gone. Give it 4 months and I'm sure it'll rival bar beer. And I'm also sure I won't be discovering that myself.

 

[Tarticus]

The Twang your talking about is it the Yeast, I have tasted some beers and there is a taste of Yeast.

This as others have said goes with time, everyone wants to drink the ale as fast as possible when it appears especially kits are best left a while.

 

[winelight]

I agree with Fore and Tarticus, time is the issue here. If the OP has been brewing kits he has likely been following the instructions and hence the homebrew taste. Not the water, the sugar, or the quality of the kit, but time.

I've found even the cheapest kits these days are really rather good if you take your time.

For me that's absolute minimum 7 weeks until drinking (3 in FV at various temps, 4 in bottles - 2 warm, 2 cold). I think the kit instructions would have you drinking it in about a week! No wonder it tastes raw.

 

[scotttc]

I tend to make ales from extract recipes and lagers from kits, kegging the ales and bottling the lagers. Ive never noticed THBT from the kegged ales, even when sampled quite young. However the bottled kits invariably suffer if sampled young, but as mentioned by others this disappears with time. My solution is to constantly have brews on the go, thus leading to a big stash that allows bottles to lie for at least 3 months before touching them.

 

[anthonyUK]

I only ever used dextrose, DME or LME.

I never had any appreciable THBT.

Now I brew AG the only thing I do to the water is chuck in a camden tablet overnight before the brewday.

Same here. Only two can kits or one can and DME.
So I would guess THBT is a combination of too much simple sugars and no fermentation control.
After I moved to BIAB, if I do a kit I do a short boil in the Buffalo boiler with some hops. It makes all the difference :thumb:
In fact my last kit which was a Wherry I added water and then the cans to my previous AG hop bed in the boiler which had 100g of Fuggles.
A taste from the sample jar was promising.