Why does this taste bad?

You've answered your own question.

 

LOL!

 

The Munich, Aromatic, and biscuit all need to be mashed rather than steeped. You might have pulled a few sugars from them and gotten a bit of conversion, but mostly you pulled starches. Those will not make a beer taste all that great. Plus, that's ~15% crystal 20. Even without the "that's too much crystal" argument, that'll leave an odd sweetness.

That's also some pretty low hopping, especially for a pale ale that -- if you stirred and measured it right -- came out at 1.062.

You racked too soon. Notwithstanding the whole "secondary or not" thing, if you're getting that much airlock activity out of your secondary, it wasn't done.

Measure your priming sugar by weight, not by volume. 1/3 cup could be a wide range of weights, meaning you could have seriously undercarbed your brew.

There's a few things you could do better. Pay more attention to detail. Yeah, brewing is as much art as science, but 11 oz instead of 7 oz is greater than a 50% increase, removing "a handful" of grains isn't going to help determine how much you actually ended up with, steeping base malts instead of mashing will not benefit a beer, etc.

If you haven't already done so, read John Palmer's How To Brew. If you have, I'd really recommend reading it again. Not intending to be rude, but it will help with many of the mistakes you made that could prevent this brew from being any fun to drink. The blessing of this hobby is that sometimes we can just throw crap together and get a drinkable beer. The curse is that once that works, there's a danger that we'll expect we can always do that. Pick a tried and true recipe, follow it exactly (no "a little more of this, a little less of that", at least not yet). Work on your techniques and processes. Build your foundation as a homebrewer before you worry about the architectural filigree.

 

Because it does not taste good. Next question.

More seriously, it sounds like you moved it to secondary before the primary was finished. That could be the problem. You only hit 67% attenuation which is pretty low for even the lowest attenuating yeast. Belgian yeast strains can start off like gangbusters but do take their time finishing.

Maybe yeast and stuff from your chest got on the smackpack while you were carrying it around under your sweatshirt. Just another possibility.

 

I generally think that if you dry hop the crap out of a beer, it will taste great right after you finish carbing. I think that lower dry hop volumes lead to a pale ale that taste great after about 6 weeks to the 12 week mark and then they start to go downhill a little. I hope I'm right on this I've made about 8 pale ales and about half were under dry hopped.

 

I'd second the recommendation on doing some reading on popular homebrew books, looking through documented recipe formulation, etc.

As for this beer, let it sit and be patient. I've found beers with Beligan yeast tend to take longer to become "drinkable" than American/English yeast-based ales (IPAs, bitters, etc.). 1.02 also seems high.

 

I might guess that your beer did have some oxygen problems. But I'm only guessing. The hops are the first to go. I don't like the 17 day dry hop. Too long, IMO. Hops may be oxidized or maybe you just extracted something undesirable over this time period. Transferring to a secondary opens up a door to oxidation. Many homebrewers do not use a secondary fermenter, but transfer from primary to a keg or bottles.

You used munich malt, biscuit malt, and aromatic malt, all of which need to be mashed, so it could be that there are some unconverted starches in your beer contributing to taste and mouthfeel issues.

Finally, your beer hasn't been in the bottles long. Give it some time.

 

You added water to the secondary? If so this could be part of the problem.

 

Obvious comments...

Mashing the grains - some of those are not steeping grains.

Did you make a starter for the yeast? A five gallon batch needs a starter with wyeast or white labs. Sometimes dry yeast will be ok to just pitch into five gallons.

Eyeballing specialty malts is a no-go - really, those need to be weighed precisely, and you need a reason for each weight.

Ditch the secondary. Sounds like you got some oxidation, and this is your likely culprit.

Use more hops.

Priming sugar MUST be weighed, not measured by volume.

Adding water after the fact is a no-go. What you get after the boil (and after any initial top-off if it's a partial mash or extract, and you didn't do a full boil), is what you get. For the record, full boil = better, even if you have to split it amongst two pots.

Consider making a simpler recipe for the next beer. Perhaps a pale ale with a fair amount of hops (3-4 oz) would be in order. Maybe less exciting, but easier to get the process down. To be honest, most of my beers have been somewhere along these lines, but my process is down, and my beers are good.

This is almost as important as the next point: compare your recipes to those of successful, experienced brewers. I've done lots of batches, but unless it's a very simple recipe (i.e. a smash), I compare my recipes to other brewers successful recipes, and make them similar. I don't pretend that I'm super-good at making recipes, especially for styles I haven't got a lot of experience with! I know it's fun to formulate your own recipes, but sometimes other people's advice will make the difference between a so-so beer and a damn good one. Ultimately I care more about making good beer than I do about patting myself on the back about what a clever recipe I formulated.

Finally: Read how to brew.

 

one additional comment. if you've racked onto water with dry hops, the water likely is full of dissolved oxygen. this oxygen will destroy all of the hop oils in your beer, not too mention the oils in the hops themselves. learning is half the battle, right?

 

There is just a lot wrong with the process. Too hard to guess what exactly caused the off flavors but there's enough identified in this thread to get you started.

 

Towards the bottom of the page

http://www.madalchemist.com/archives/the-new-brewer-steeping-specialty-grains/

 

Focusing on your tasting notes:

(1) Paper-thin head and low carbonation -- probably due to not enough priming sugar. Could be an inadequate amount of yeast (your FG of 1.020 suggests this might be the case). (2) dried grass -- typical of long dry hopping times. (3) stale hops, slight barnyard taste -- old hops and /or oxidation issues. Could also be old extract or grains. Possibly due to adding water after primary fermentation. (4) Watered down earthy sweet marinade ... no dryness ... absence of sugars -- attenuation issues and/or starches from poor conversion of specialty grains.

I recently read Gordon Strong's book on homebrewing. For me the biggest takeaway from his book is the importance on focusing on key aspects of the process, and not worrying about unimportant details. Based on your notes, I would guess that the following need more attention in your case: (1) Make sure all ingredients are fresh; (2) Pitch an adequate amount of yeast and aerate; (3) Be precise with priming sugar amount.

You mention nothing about fermentation temperature. Proper fermentation temperature is one of biggest keys to great beer, although your notes do not indicate that this was a problem for this beer.

Topping off with water is fine if the post-boil volume is too small. It just needs to be done before fermentation, as oxygen in the water is fine (in, fact desirable) at this point as it helps the fermentation process.

And, as other have said, give it some time. Probably not all of the problems will go away, but some may recede as the beer ages.

All of us have made crappy beers. They are best used as learning experiences (and for marinading bratwurst). Your upside is that you have only 2.5 gallons, rather than the standard 5 (or 10) gallons!

 

Carb it up fully and blend with something complimentary if needed...sometimes the blend is better than either. I just did this with a terrible malt forward Steam that I blended (in the glass) with a Mosaic PA. Biggest problem if bottling is that you'll have to drink 2 beers...damn the luck : )

 

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/wiki/index.php/Malts_Chart

 

http://byo.com/resources/grains?view=grains