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Why does my beer taste like grapefruit?

Yep - my spouse kept buying that Summer Shandy stuff - I'm more a fan of Chocolate stout, oatmeal stout, even bourbon barrel stout
(Blue Mountain Dark Hollow Imperial Stout - yum) - just not interested in fruit in my beer (nor "lite" beer) - when i drink a beer I want flavor and depth!

toxcrusadr said:
Couple nights ago I went to happy hour at a local pub, had lots of taps. I was looking for a lighter beer, not afraid of anything mind you, but wasn't in the mood for dark. I tasted something (can't remember what now, duh), probably a lager or summer ale, and it tasted like grapefruit. The bartender agreed. I assumed they put flavor in it, which I don't go for. I drank something else.

Tonight I found a 6-pack of Sam Adams Noble Pils on sale. Now I like lagers (usually less hoppy), and I like the aromatic Czech hops, so I bought it. Darn it, tastes like grapefruit! The Sam Adams website even says that. They also list the ingredients, which includes NO GRAPEFRUIT. It must be coming from either the hops, or the particular combination of malt and yeast. I like fruit, and I like beer, but I prefer to enjoy them separately. Bleh. :wtf:
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BTW, I would totally drink that Rasputin stuff. Wait a second, wasn't he poisoned or something? That's not an Arsenic Stout is it? :D
 
The fruity hopped beers are pretty good thirst quenchers (summertime beer, imo), but when there's a chill in the air I go to Porter,Stout, Oktoberfest types or Brown Ales.
 
toxcrusadr said:
Couple nights ago I went to happy hour at a local pub, had lots of taps. I was looking for a lighter beer, not afraid of anything mind you, but wasn't in the mood for dark. I tasted something (can't remember what now, duh), probably a lager or summer ale, and it tasted like grapefruit. The bartender agreed. I assumed they put flavor in it, which I don't go for. I drank something else.

Tonight I found a 6-pack of Sam Adams Noble Pils on sale. Now I like lagers (usually less hoppy), and I like the aromatic Czech hops, so I bought it. Darn it, tastes like grapefruit! The Sam Adams website even says that. They also list the ingredients, which includes NO GRAPEFRUIT. It must be coming from either the hops, or the particular combination of malt and yeast. I like fruit, and I like beer, but I prefer to enjoy them separately. Bleh. :wtf:
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I bought a particular case of Saranac beer, possibly a White Ale once that I had never tried before. It tasted like perhaps 15% GRAPEFRUIT JUICE! No idea why. That case took a REAL LONG time to finish, as in several months.
 
I'm also not a fan of bitter or fruity beers. Lots of hops gives me heartburn too, which is doubly unpleasant. I'm more of a porter or stout kinda guy. When I was in Gurnee for work I had a Great Lakes Imperial Smoked Porter with dinner one night. That was excellent stuff, but at somewhere around 10% you can't drink many and still function. I had to drive, so I only had the one. I picked up a case of the Leinenkugel Snowdrift Vanilla Porter last night and had several. Thats sort of a light flavor porter, and the vanilla makes it very smooth to drink. I also like the Yuengling porter, though its not nearly as smooth as some I've had. I visit a friend who lives near the brewery though and I can get the stuff for about 20 bucks a case. Its quite decent at that price.
 
Grassy, Floral, Citrus, Resiny/Dank, etc....any/all hop variety traits are delish in my book. I come from the Land of Hops, the PNW. And yes, i'm a Hop Head and (I)IPA is one of my favorite styles of beer. :thmbsp:
 
toxcrusadr said:
Back in the 90s, I bought a 6-pack of Zima. I bet it took longer than that.
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I'd be willing to bet that there a ton of 90s Zima six packs still in fridges with 1 empty bottle and five full ones.:D

I make beer from time to time. I use a kit, and the results are hit/miss. The brown ale ones are always decent, if not tasty. About ten years ago I made one that was a Corona knock-off. The first batch tasted just like it. I bet most people(beer drinkers included) would have a hard time if they did a blind taste test with it vs a real one.
The second batch had a huge citrus thing going on. Tasted like fake citrus flavour was added. I figured I messed up with sanitation or the process, but the third batch was the same. I talked to the store, and other people were saying the same thing. I guess they changed the hops in the recipe.:scratch2:
 
When it comes to beers I like what the British Isles produces. Most of the beers produced in Europe with the exception of the Lambic beers from Belgium are not at the top of my drinking order.
 
Grapefruit esters, could be under pitched yeast (not enough), or fermentation temperature runaway (to hot), and it can happen when you aren't even looking. We had a recorder on our jacket chiller, had a hoppy brown ale come up like this and it was the only thing different. Somehow the ferment went up to about 88F for six hours in the start of the cycle, someone may have forgotten to open a chiller line.
 
botrytis said:
Dry hopping is the process of adding hops after either the boil stage or the fermentation stage. It is just to add bitterness to the beer.
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Dry hop additions are typically after primary fermentation is complete. Anything after the wort has cooled I suppose could be considered a dry hop addition. But, again, typ. after primary fermentation.

Dry hop additions are typically for aroma and some flavor. Bittering is from the early hop additions in the boil, late and flame out additions for flavor and aroma.
 
Yeah, I'm a home brewer too.

You can have first wort hop addition, and or first addition as soon as boiling starts, then timed additions until flameout (or for real adventurous nearly continuous additions as the boil goes on), then typically a flameout addition.

Dry hopping after fermentation is complete is the most common. Dry hopping during fermentation is somewhat of a waste, IMO, as a good portion of the aromas will be carried out with the CO2. Of course, someone can always do something in a non-typical manner. Putting the hops in a hop bag is what many do, some put them in loose and just deal with a screen or something over the end of their autosiphon (or whatever they use). I used a hop bag when I made Surly Furious. This beer had 8.5 ounces of hops in a 5gal batch for the dry hopping addition, which went in after the completion of primary fermentation.

Some dry hop right in the primary fermenter, some move the beer to a secondary fermenter for dry hopping. I've done it both ways. Unless I make a beer that likes to age (such as the ~10% ABV Russian Imperial I did a while back), I do everything in the primary with no transfer to secondary.

Edit: Pictures attached of my two latest brews. The Russian Imperal Stout (in bulk conditioning/aging) and Waldo Lake Amber (the one with the thermometer by it) ready to bottle in a week or so.
 
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