My Coniston Bluebird Clone has got worse!

[wjohnson12321]

Hi, after what I thought was a bloomin marvelous clone of Coniston Bluebird (Tasting after 1 week of bottling) the taste of the Challenger hops has started to fade now leaving a very bitter but well carbonated and conditioned bitter. (now bottled for around 2 months).

Can anyone work out why this would be? The first bottle I tried after around a week was absolutely spot on in fact I think in a blind testing I would have been hard pushed to tell the difference!
Do you think the fermentation process still going on in the bottle has caused this or maybe because I had such a small stock pot and i've diluted it too much???

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

I was using a 12 litre stock pot and the following recipe...

1.5kg LME (Pale)
1Kg DME (Extra Light)
100g Crystal Malt

45g Challenger @ 90
40g Challenger @ 15
1 Whirlfloc @ 15

SAFALE S04.

[a-slayer]

Just goes to show ... if it tastes nice, drink it even if it has been only bottled for two days!

[wjohnson12321]

That mate is exactly what I am thinking now lol. I just hope the same doesnt happen again this weekend for my first all grain BIAB. It was probably most dissapointing because it was amazing to start with then got worse? As you all probably know Bluebird is just full of that challenger hop flavour that i absolutely love and I think if i was doing it again using the extract method I would be tempted to throw about 100g in at 10 mins to try and encourage that strong challenger flavour to the beer.

[Jocky]

What was the batch size at the end? 19 litres I'm guessing?

I think all you can do is experiment. Either up the hops @ 15 or even add some more hops @ 5 and dry hop it.

There's definitely a case that not all beers improve after a short while ageing (these are the risks of live beer), but it seems unusual for it to mature in 1 week and get worse from there.

Think I'm going to have to make this in one of my experiments.

[wjohnson12321]

yeh was 19l its a complete mystery to me tbh. I was sat there thinking.... Where did the flavour go out of this beer???

Lets just hope BIAB #1 tommorow ends up staying good for me