Beer Forum

I've been brewing small (3 gal), full wort boil, all grain batches for about 2 years now and they all seem to taste the same to me. I've brewed a variety of recipes using different mats, hops, and yeast and all the beers (within the same color range) all seem to taste the same! I pretty much always hit my gravity and I have been pitching plenty of yeast. Is it my water? any suggestions?

So for example, your IPA's taste like a hefeweizen? What style of beers have you brewed that are tasting the same?

I've mostly been doing pale ales and IPA's and as an example I brewed two ales with the same grain bill and aggressively hopped one of the two of them and to me they wound up tasting the same.

Man, I almost made that joke.

Pales & IPA's don't equate to a variety of different recipes. They're going to taste pretty similar. Add on top of that palate fatigue from all the hops & it's going to be even tougher to pick up on subtle nuances.

can you post a couple your recipes?

IPA: (3 gal batch)
5.5 lbs pale american 2 row
0.25 lb crystal 40
0.25 lb Flaked Barley
O.G. 1.045 (missed my target by quite a bit)

0.5 oz columbus 50 min boil time
1.00 oz cascade 10 min boil time
1.00 oz cascade 2 min boil time
2.00 oz cascade dry hop 5 days
Total IBU about 60

California Ale V (WLP051)

Pale Ale:
5 lbs pale american 2 row
0.5 lb crystal 20
0.5 lbs cara-pils
O.G. 1.057

0.5 oz simcoe boil time 20 mins
0.5 oz simcose boil time 5 mins
1.00 oz cascade boil time 2 mins


I just tasted these two side by side and they do taste slightly different. I guess I was just thinking the IPA would be a hop bomb and it didn't really come out that way.

Kegged or bottled?

2 oz of late hops and 2 oz of dry hops is far from a hop bomb.