"New" beer smells

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spook123_uk

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Hi All.

My Youngs APA has spent the last 2 weeks in a pressure barrel carbonating at around 20c and I've now dropped the temp in the brew fridge to mature the beer.
I've had a cheeky pint out of it tonight and it has almost a strong fruity smell and taste.. I know this is new and it should get better with time but just for a sanity check I wanted to see if this is normal for this stage?

Only reason I'm a little concerned is that I had terrible problems with a syphon filter when transferring to the barrel and it kept stopping. I wasn't sure if I had oxygenated it whilst having to keep re-starting (until I took the filter off!).

It's got a haze but a perfect white head.

On another note. Just taken delivery of the new Festival US Steam Beer. That'll be getting started tomorrow :)
 
Hi All.

My Youngs APA has spent the last 2 weeks in a pressure barrel carbonating at around 20c and I've now dropped the temp in the brew fridge to mature the beer.
I've had a cheeky pint out of it tonight and it has almost a strong fruity smell and taste.. I know this is new and it should get better with time but just for a sanity check I wanted to see if this is normal for this stage?

Only reason I'm a little concerned is that I had terrible problems with a syphon filter when transferring to the barrel and it kept stopping. I wasn't sure if I had oxygenated it whilst having to keep re-starting (until I took the filter off!).

It's got a haze but a perfect white head.

On another note. Just taken delivery of the new Festival US Steam Beer. That'll be getting started tomorrow :)


Sounds fairly typical, as there are a lot of dry hops with this kit and a fruity taste is pretty much the point!

As far as oxygeynating goes, one of my first brews was a Coopers stout which I insisted on bottling after 7 days, by dropping the beer straight into 500ml PET bottles from the tap on the Coopers fermenter.

The stuff kept fizzing up and I had a doble banked line of bottles containing varying amounts of beer and varying amounts of fizz on a glass topped desk. Just to put the old Top Hat on it :hat:was the Coopers bottles I had bought for the job.

They were from the batch with which there were problems with holes in the bottom, affecting roughly every fifth bottle, so not ony fizz at the top, but leaks at the bottom, all happening in my elder daughter's bedroom.

So basically there is beer everywhere, desktop, towels, kitchen roll and worst of all the plain, pale coloured bedroom carpet. For most of the bottling time, there is considerably less in the bottles than everywhere else.

Eventually, the stout seemed to take it all in its stride, barring the fair proportion that ended up in washing machine or Vax.

I had calmed down once I realised what seemed to be the leaking pattern and organised a botched together rescue / clear up "on the fly" and after a few hours, all was put down to experience.

(Coopers sent me some more bottles and a replacement kit, too, via the UK distributor - no questions asked).

So, to answer the question - my guess is it will be lot less damaging than you think. Especially since I doubt it is going to be hanging around too long.
 
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Oxidised beer tends to be have a bit of a flat, wet cardboardy smell. My razorback ipa was oxidised due to a barrel leak and my own incompetence. At the time I didn't realise that's what the duff taste was but looking back that was definitely the issue.

Long story short I don't think that's the issue. My limited kit experience is that they tend for whatever reason to have a stronger fruity taste.
 
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