When brewing beer I normally brew extra beyond the 5-gallons that fits in the Corny keg. Normally will have between 1 and 3 gallons in PTFE containers (to top off the keg when getting low). Also bottle some beer for competitions and mostly gifts. Sometimes will bottle in larger 1-liter or 1.25 liter Coke (etc) bottles. Anyway, that’s why I always try to brew over 9-gallon batches, not the 5-gallon batches that I did at the start. Always drink more, and 5-gallons that tastes great can be drained very quickly - even with having 5-6 kegs on tap at once.

I have a German Pilsner on tap now. Bottled 6 big bottles and 6 smaller 12 oz bottles for competition along with kegging, etc. At the start I thought the brew was fabulous. Doubled up on the finishing hops, 15 minute to 0 min (used at hop stand at 180-deg F).

Initially I loved the beer! Told my Sister - flight attendant fluent in German with lots of German beer experience - that I think that I “cracked the Jever Pils code” - our favorite German Pilsner. Over a few weeks it seemed to get happier though. And pretty soon it started tasting kind of harsh to me. So much that I was blending about 60% German Pilsner / 40% German Helles to arrive at a nice German Pilsner.

I needed to prepare some beer for competition and decided that I needed to blend the beer...as noted above...so that it was not too over-hopped. I spent over an hour figuring out the exact blend percentage. Was almost ready to open up a smaller competition bottle to start the blending process - but decided to open up a larger brew first, to do a taste test. And...fabulous! Fabulous taste. Cloudy, which will get marked down if is like that when being evaluated. But the taste is great, to me anyhow.

So I decided - leave it alone... Likely will not improve things to blend. Then this eve, I poured more beer from the keg, and it tasted...very good. (???). What the heck??? Very odd. Beer from keg keeps getting clearer, which is normal’ish.

Sometimes I suppose it takes time for things to mellow out. Really odd. But it can sometimes work like this... But this one is especially strange - such huge changes in such a small amount of time.

Guess this is turning into a “rant”. Interesting... Thoughts?

Interesting post Scott.
I guess beer just never stops evolving at any stage. Seems odd to swing one way then back, but....

I am not sure where your taking your "samples" though, Are these from the keg, or the other bottles?
Have you tried a taste test against all the types of storage at the same time? Might be interesting to see if you can detect a difference, and also whether they all change or not.

I struggled to understand your 3rd paragraph by the way because you said the beer was happier but tasted harsh, is this "hoppier"?

Cheers

Thanks for responding @mally

Meant to say hoppier. As in too many hops. (Spell correct or typo mistake).

The third paragraph I was saying that only a couple days previous I had been blending it with a less hoppy Helles to make it easier to drink. Was planning to take the crazy step of opening up newly bottled beer to blend them so I does not get massacred in beer competitions... Want my bottled beer to taste good - as is.

My last couple glasses were from the keg, once again. Is it preference from just drinking it a different day, or has the beer actually changed...? Realistically it could be some of both, but I think the legged beer was going through an awkward phase. Hopefully the bottled beer doesn’t do the same as it may hit that phase just when being judged.

Some other salient points... Beer has been out of fermentor for only 3 to 4 weeks or so. Bottled beer sat on my office floor for a couple weeks to carb up, and has only been in the refrigerator a week. Changes seem to be the most rapid - to my mind - the first month or two. Beer does change after that too. But this seemed to be very dramatic changes in only a couple days. Interesting...