Avoiding flavors i dislike found in commercial beers

[Padalac]

My 2 cents:

A lot of what you object to in a given commercial beer may be down to it's condition, rather than its recipe, or its brewing method per se. It's possible that if you got to try those beers in their best possible condition, you might have a different opinion of them, but maybe I'm wrong.

As an example, a couple of months ago I bought a bottle of Firestone Walker Pale 31. It's a very well-reputed beer, and generally considered to be a very fine example of the style - but I was very disappointed, and I have a sneaking suspicion that what I disliked about it was along the same lines as what you dislike about the beers you listed above. Then just last week, I saw the same beer on tap in a nearby craft beer-serving pub. Completely different beer, and much much nicer than I remembered the bottle to be. The explanation is that the keg in the bar had probably been shipped over in a chilled unit and served immediately on clean beer lines. It was very fresh and had 3x the hop flavour and aroma of the bottle. The bottle had a caramel flavour, which I disliked, that was missing from the keg version. Basically, the bottle was old and stale.

In conclusion, it could be that you will avoid the bad flavours and qualities you are experiencing, simply by packaging your own beer and keeping it fresh! Keep it out of the light, keep it cool and keep it away from oxygen, and drink it at its optimal condition and I believe you are going to avoid this. Many commercial beers taste bad because they've been left out in the warm, rolled around too much, left on a sunlit dusty shelf too long, etc etc. These shouldn't be issues as a homebrewer.

Fuller's ESB, and quite possibly Worthingtons White Shield, by the way is pasteurised - not bottle conditioned. The pasteurisation definitely changes the flavour - and may be responsible for the flavour you didn't like. I reckon if you tried the beer fresh on cask in a decent pub, you'd have a different opinion. Again, this is a problem peculiar to commercial beer that shouldn't affect you as a home brewer.

The one thing I would say, based on those choices - it could be stale crystal malt? All those beers have quite a healthy dose of crystal malt I reckon. Then again, going back to what I said before, crystal malt tastes fine, when the beer is fresh, and balanced with a fresher hop profile, but seems to age/stale quite badly.. (other malts, like roasted malts seem to age much better)

[Dennis King]

Fuller's ESB, and quite possibly Worthingtons White Shield, by the way is pasteurised - not bottle conditioned.

White shield is bottle conditioned.

Personally I've yet to find any bottled version of a cask beer that is tastes anywhere as good.

[burrowsbrewery]

Thanks for the input everybody.

Bit more info, just been to a local and had a pint of Theakstons Old Peculiar. This used to be my favorite commercial beer, now i can't even say like it. (But I can still stay I appreciate its complexity). It was overly sweet and *I think* i didn't like the the hop character, which is Fuggles IIRR.

Perhaps my palette has changed a lot over the past few months without me realising the transition. Perhaps now I prefer dryer more hoppy beers.
This has happened to a friend of mine, he tends to gravitate towards hop forward american styles, likes brewdog etc.

[MTW]

If you've only used s-04, Nottingham and us-05, then they're all high attenuators in my book. They generally leave dry beers - yes, including s-04. Of those three, Nottingham and s-04 get estery at higher temperatures. US-05, not much.

I know it's counter intuitive, but maybe try a lower attenuator like Windsor or WLP002 - even though the latter is the Fullers strain itself. I know that may seem a weird idea, but I think it may provide insight.

Personally I've yet to find any bottled version of a cask beer that is tastes anywhere as good.

I'd agree with this for most English ales darker than amber. I've come to prefer keg and bottle APAs/AIPAs over cask versions of the same beers, at least (dare I mention it) if they have a sparkler attached. a cleaner, less creamy mouthfeel is better to me, for them.

[serum]

I'd also like any 1845 or ESB you have kicking around!

I did a side by side tasting of bottled and cask ESB in a Fullers pub recently and strange as it seems, I actually preferred the bottle. The flavours seemed to jump out a lot more and you get that big hit of marmalade from the malt and sharper hops. I also found the diacetyl seemed stronger tasting in the cask version but the hops weren't quite as noticeable. It's strange how different they were. They're so different that if you liked one there's no guarantee you'd like the other.

Old Peculier on the other hand is so much better from a cask.

I realise I'll probably get a slap from any CAMRA members for that post.

[basswulf]

Leaving aside questions of 'better' and 'worse', are there any beers that taste very similar in bottle and cask forms?

Also, how consistent do you find bottled beers and do you find they are affected my by how you treat them? I recently noted how a batch of mine from November significantly improved when it had been standing in the kitchen for a day compared to taking the bottle straight from the dark and relatively cool utility room I store them in. I hadn't given it a huge amount of thought before but I wonder how much commercial bottled products benefit or suffer from how they are handled?

Wulf

[Padalac]

I'd also like any 1845 or ESB you have kicking around!

I did a side by side tasting of bottled and cask ESB in a Fullers pub recently and strange as it seems, I actually preferred the bottle. The flavours seemed to jump out a lot more and you get that big hit of marmalade from the malt and sharper hops. I also found the diacetyl seemed stronger tasting in the cask version but the hops weren't quite as noticeable. It's strange how different they were. They're so different that if you liked one there's no guarantee you'd like the other.

Old Peculier on the other hand is so much better from a cask.

I realise I'll probably get a slap from any CAMRA members for that post.

that's funny.. i found the cask version of ESB to be quite a lot hoppier.. cask esb is dry hopped, while bottled isn't. could be that the cask was old/stale?

[Jocky]

Yep, CO2 is a big part of it. Pour bottles with enthusiasm - you need to knock out some of that gas. Also don't over chill the beer.

[Mr. Dripping]

With commercial beers you have to assume (I would reckon) that the fermentation temperature has been well controlled and that the correct quantity of healthy yeast has been pitched.
From this, it is relatively safe to assume that any flavour that someone take a dislike to is from a particular malt, a particular hop or a normally desirable character of the yeast strain.
It is relatively easy to find information online these days for lots and lots of commercial beers, so you can make some reasonable progress that way.
You can of course try many brews of your own to root out what you don't like.
Personally I only have issues with two things that I've been able to identify. The first is Special-B, which I can now taste a mile off. The second is a strong (to me anyway) earthy note that a particular yeast used by Rudgate Brewery gives off.......I can taste it through all their beers that I've tried so I'm fairly sure it isn't malt or hop driven.
Someone earlier in the thread mentioned off flavours due to product degradation (packaging oxygen, handling issues and such like).....these can be quite hard for some people to discern, but with a flavour wheel to hand and a bit of practice you can 'train' yourself to pick them out.

[serum]

That had crossed my mind.

I find fullers beers, whether they're bottle conditioned or not, have a similar malt taste and I think this is what he's on about but he might still like the cask versions. I really like their bottled beers. I had their version of HSB from cask in the same pub and the taste seemed closer to their bottled beers. I really liked that one.

[bigchris]

I think Basswulf has a very valid point. I'm sure that how the bottle/cask is treated after it has been filled has a big effect, temperature, light (bottles only), shaking around, time between filling and drinking, serving temperature all will have some influence on the taste. Us homebrewers know very well that, after kegging or bottling a beer, its taste and aroma profile changes with time, coming to a peak at some point (perhaps 3 weeks for a IPA, longer for a stout for example) then after a further period of time will begin to be not so good. And that is when we take great care of our product having worked so hard to make it. Supermarket and discount store bottled beer can potentially have had all sorts of mistreatment.