Beginner question

[Celiacbrew]

So my first ever batch of homebrew is done bottle conditioning. It's a Cascade APA from noble grape. The beer is great, lots of bitterness, I boiled it for an hour instead of the 30 minutes in the recipe. Very little sweetness and just the right amount of body. I would be happy buying it from a microbrewery. Except the head is pretty much none existent and the smell of the beer is really sweet smelling. Like a bar the next day or like the dried up beer on a keg. What did I do wrong?

[Keith]

So my first ever batch of homebrew is done bottle conditioning. It's a Cascade APA from noble grape. The beer is great, lots of bitterness, I boiled it for an hour instead of the 30 minutes in the recipe. Very little sweetness and just the right amount of body. I would be happy buying it from a microbrewery. Except the head is pretty much none existent and the smell of the beer is really sweet smelling. Like a bar the next day or like the dried up beer on a keg. What did I do wrong?

I've always gone 60 mins on my extract as well. I found 30 wasn't enough, altho it really darkens the kits up. Head issue is hard to say, could be a few things. Are you able to post the recipe? As for the sweet smell, you could be getting some of the hop aroma possibly that appears of comes off sweet smelling.

I'm presently transitioning from Extract to All Grain so have some experience and am more than willing to share my experiences.

[Celiacbrew]

I don't know the recipe, but if I had to guess, I would say its something like this one from HBT except no dry hops.

6lbs Light Dry Malt Extract added to the boil
1lbs Crystal 60 add the grains to the water and steep until the water temp reaches 170 and pull them out.

Hops

2.5oz Cascade 7.5% AA at 15 min
1oz Cascade 7.5%aa at 5 min
.50 oz Cascade 7.5% at flameout
1oz Cascade 7.5% dry hop 7 days after primary fermentation has wrapped up.

I don't really have any experience with cascade hops so that might be it. But I've drank lots of IPA over the years and they didn't smell quite so sickly sweet. But seeing as the taste is just about bang on I will chalk it up to that.

[Keith]

I'm wondering if you are taking the floral smell Cascade has as a sweeter smell on the nose. You should bring a bottle to the next brewnosers meeting. Lots of experience that would gladly provide some feedback.

[Celiacbrew]

That's a good idea. Thanks Keith.

[amartin]

I've noticed that head retention seems to increase over time, so it might be better later. I'm not sure why though.

[redoubt]

Hard to say what's up, but a couple ideas...

-if you used priming sugar for carbonating the beer, that may still be detectable if your beer is *just* ready to drink. Try leaving some of the beer longer (not in the fridge) and see if that changes. This could account for the sweet aspect as well as the lack of head (unless it pours with a full head that just quickly disappears...then that'd be a head-retention issue)
-if the sweet smell is kinda fruity it could be an ester issue. In which case, review your fermentation practices and temps.

Hope that gives you a couple ideas to check into at least.


Keely.

[Celiacbrew]

Hard to say what's up, but a couple ideas...

-if you used priming sugar for carbonating the beer, that may still be detectable if your beer is *just* ready to drink. Try leaving some of the beer longer (not in the fridge) and see if that changes. This could account for the sweet aspect as well as the lack of head (unless it pours with a full head that just quickly disappears...then that'd be a head-retention issue)
-if the sweet smell is kinda fruity it could be an ester issue. In which case, review your fermentation practices and temps.

Hope that gives you a couple ideas to check into at least.


Keely.

I read up on esters on the bus and that sounds like a possibility based on the mistakes I made while fermenting the batch (too cold to start, made it too hot after that etc). It will be interesting to see if the smell is in the second batch as I controlled the temperature much more tightly on that batch and I used a smack pack instead of a single packet of dry yeast. The only strike against this theory is that the smell is very distinctly the old beer smell you get when you step behind a bar or the smell on a dirty keg or the smell of a dried up dirty drip tray. So I don't know if I would call it fruity. Then again this could just be wishful thinking on my part since I really hope its not esters. For now I will keep tasting the beer one per day to see how the taste changes over the next few weeks. The sweetness in the taste went away for the most part so maybe the sweet smell will also.

Thank you for the advice Keely.

[Celiacbrew]

So I tried my beer again tonIght and the extra few days took care of the sweet smell, toned down the bitterness and took away some of the KABAM from the fresh hop taste. Looks like a case of not believing what was written down on every homebrew forum about ignoring the directions in the box and to rely on what the beer tells you. Kind of embarrassing. But onward to the new challenge...figuring out where the hop aroma went and working on making it stick around longer. I'm thinking FWh and dry hopping are key.

[redoubt]

Glad your beer sorted itself out. Sounds like you're on the right track!

-Keely.