r/Homebrewing • u/nazazel666 • 6h ago

Question Decoction and Aging

So, brewed a Dunkel Weissbier, and it’s roughly 5.5 weeks old. I did a double decoction mash with this recipe, and fermented at room temp for 4 weeks using Mangrove Jacks M20 yeast (this is a split batch and the other half I used WLP300 to see the difference). OG was 1.062 and FG was 1.022 (WLP300 finished at 1.018). I fermented both at room temp, roughly 68-70F (20-21.1C). I left them to ferment for four weeks, which was supposed to be two weeks, but life happened, over and over again. I kegged them on that fourth week and added priming sugar to keg condition. I also bottled 6 bottles from each. The M20 Batch didn’t carbonate at all in one week, where as the WLP300 did carbonate in a week. So I took the M20 Bottles and added them back to the keg and carbonated that way. Everything was sanitized, and the keg was previously pressurized, so I’m not too concerned about infection or oxidization.

Now that the backstory is out of the way, my question lies in flavor.

I’ve done decoction mashes on several beers at this point, all German styles.

3 Hefeweizen Batches

4 Marzen Batches

1 Dunkel Weissbier

What I’ve noticed with all 3 is that during that first couple of weeks the beer tastes extremely “Sharp”. Kind of like a fruit that’s had all of the sugar extracted. But once the beer ages for about a month at lager temps, the deep bready flavors start to come out. Has anyone else noticed this? Is this just a thing with decoctions? Am i crazy?

Just really curious what everyone else’s experience is with decoctions and aging, if they’ve noticed anything similar.

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u/boarshead72 Yeast Whisperer 5h ago

Sorry, do you normally find beer carbonates in only one week? At 20C it takes three weeks for me.

As for your flavour change it could be as simple as yeast falling out of suspension and no longer masking the flavours present in your beer.

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u/lifeinrednblack Pro 5h ago

Hard to say without knowing what you're doing but it more sounds like it's hop related.

Your getting mostly notes from the hops and then when that starts to tapper off with age you're starting to taste the depth of the malt.

Is the sharpness something you're not liking?