Wilko Golden Ale - Tangy taste!?

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ClownPrince

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Made up a Wilko Golden Ale kit and got round to trying a bottle yesterday.
It isn't bad but there's a weird fruity tangy taste i wasn't expecting.
I was hoping it would turn out similar to Wainwright or Hobgoblin Gold.

I made it just using the kit, a kilo of sugar and 400g(ish) of Golden Syrup. I used the Wilko Gervin Yeast
I added another 200g of sugar when it went into the secondary (after 2 weeks) then bottled it two weeks later and left it for 3 more weeks.

Has anyone had a similar experience? i've never brewed with the Wilko Yeast before (although i'm lead to believe it's pretty solid) nor have i brewed with Golden Syrup.

As I said it's not undrinkable, just a bit odd tasting.
 
First, if I understand you correctly, you appear to have added your priming sugar but then not bottled your beer until 2 weeks after. So most of the 200g sugar will have produced more alcohol but any CO2 will have been lost. You only have CO2 in your bottled beer from that which stays in solution irrespective, plus that produced by the residual sugar that the yeast didn't manage to consume during the preceding 2 weeks. I am surprised you didn't report it flat. When you add priming sugar you add it to your beer then package.
However leaving your beer 2 weeks after adding 200g of sugar might have worked in your favour since if you had bottled straight after, you would have had very highly carbonated beer. I would have thought somewhere about 130g would have been better to suit the style.
And I have used golden syrup to brew and in largish amounts like you have used it brings its own taste to the beer, and is particularly noticeable in lighter beers like you have. Perhaps that's what you can detect.
Next if this kit is the standard Wilko 1.5kg LME one can and you have added 1.2kg sugar plus the GS to it it will have come up quite thin and what you can taste is the dryness from all the sugar you have used relative to the smallish amount of malt.
Also it may be the kit itself. I did this kit when it was sold as a two can (3kg malt) and it was one of the worse kits I did.
So I would just leave it for a few more weeks. The odd taste you have found may just condition out
Hope you find something useful in all of that
 
Thanks Terry, very helpful.
I prime in the bottle (1 flat teaspoon of sugar per bottle); I think it's just habit that i add more sugar in the Secondary, think i misunderstood batch priming when I first became aware of it and never stopped adding sugar at this stage.

I think if i want answers I need get another one of these kits and do a split batch, 5l with Sugar, 5l with DME, 5l with sugar and golden syrup and 5l with just golden syrup.
 

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