Strong Alcohol Taste

[Emerican]

I recently made a batch with rye and wheat in it for the first time. The beer however tastes like hard liquor. The batch is only 3 weeks old and i just bottled it, but i had to taste. Is this a sign of contamination or is it just too early too tell.

[xbrewer]

It doesn't sound like it's necessarily a sign of contamination to me. My gut feeling is that you need to adjust the relative quantaties of your ingredients next time. Maybe less wheat and rye and more barley malt.

[Emerican]

Well, thats a good sign. I think it may be the hops that I was tasting since I didn't use too much wheat and rye. Thanks.

[jayhawk]

I would give the beer some more conditioning time. Three weeks is a bit early to tell. I like using rye and wheat too, especially rye. Did you use rye malt or flaked rye?

Chris

[Emerican]

Time is on my side.
I used some flaked rye, seemed to work good the last time I used it. It was just the first time that I had gone with the wheat, figured it might add some sweatness to it.

[BillyBock]

What was your fermentation temperature? Higher temps (ie. more than 75F) are usually to blame for this.