That "Homebrew Taste"

Peter, I understand your reticence. While it is true that there is a limited window where a hoppy beer like an IPA is at the height of optimality, they are still worthwhile beers to make (in my opinion). I don’t brew DIPAs but for my IPAs the beer is optimum at weeks 4 – 8 in the bottle. Beyond the 8 week period the hop aroma does diminish a bit but the beer is still very tasty for another 4 weeks (till 12 weeks in the bottle). The beer from 12 – 16 weeks is still very drinkable but diminished as compared to weeks 4-12. If that timeframe is truly unacceptable to you then you are correct that hoppy beers are not for you.

Cheers!

Jack

 

I don't quite take it this far! But only 6 of my last 20 beers have been hoppyish American beers. I can almost always find a commercial example of IPA and APA that I prefer to drink. Three of those 6 were generously hopped American brown ales. I'm considering an APA and/or an IPA in the summer brew season.

 

Unfortunately, only about 5 bottles remained at that time.

 

Just started drinking my latest batch which I did use 8 ozs. of corn sugar in the boil. Definitely detect a slight sour flavor that I used to get in all my other batches and definitely did not get in my last 3 batches where I did not use corn sugar. To each their own, but I will never use sugar in any more of my beers.

 

I routinely use table sugar (no different than corn sugar, in this context) in my Saisons and most of my heavier beers - DIPAs and RIS, for example, to thin them out a bit. I'm a little more careful with fermentation temperatures when I add sugar. Not because I've had problems or read anything suggesting that I should; it just seems intuitive.

 

Well my DIPA that was the first use of corn sugar in the boil came out fine with no sour flavors. N=1 and all. Note: fermentation temperatures have been low, 64F in the freezer where they ferment.

 

My temps have been great. 64-66 for each of my last 5 batches. Maybe I'm sensitive to the flavor. Not sure, but it seems like more than a coincidence at this point.

 

With all the batches I've brewed, I've only EVER used sugar in the boil once, and I enjoyed my beers just fine anyway. There are bzillions of ways to make beer that don't involve sugar in the boil that still produce great beer.

 

From a cursory glance on the web what I found funny is that sucrose (table sugar) apparently is not actually a "simple sugar" (monosaccharide) anyway even though at least in brewing it is often referred to as such. Like maltose, it's a compound sugar (disaccaharide). The difference is maltose is made of two glucose molecules while sucrose is made up of glucose and fructose. I guess somehow the maltose is considered more complex and sucrose winds up being the simpler sugar, though neither are one-molecule sugars. I obviously don't have all the info though.

I do see this advice over and over though, that you want the yeast to work on the maltose first though some others have no problem tossing in sucrose at flame out. I thought I had read an answer in Yeast, but now I can't find it.

 

More than anything, I used it for a cheap ABV bump, so I really don't need it.

 

I provided one in an older thread a while back (Too little time to search, catching a flight). In short is very dependent on the yeast strain, and in some cases is a very short temporary inhibition of the enzymes involved in non-simple sugar metabolism (Negative feedback mechanism) by the gene products of the enzymes involved in simple sugar metabolism, in other cases it can be longer term.

 

Ah, okay, this might make some sense. When you add sucrose in the boil, it inverts and breaks down into it's simple sugar parts anyway. So in that way, perhaps you are adding simple sugars before the maltase enzyme can break down the maltose?

Found that bit about inverting here - http://www.brewerylane.com/sugarsum.html

 

So more or less, its a matter of certain enzymes interfering with others?

I suppose we are getting a little off topic here, lol.