confused about conditioning

I made my first ever partial extract lager with a rice specialty grain and lager Yeast.  I 2 stage fermented were the primary was at 70-72deg for 4 days and then secondary was at 36deg for 12 weeks.  It was clear at that time and I tasted it before bottling and it was the best beer I have ever tasted.  I bottled and naturally carbonated for 30 days at 62deg then refrigerated for 3 days.  I was shocked at how much the flavor had changed and how cloudy it got.  What went wrong?

Can you describe the flavor?

Did you see any rings around the neck of the bottle at the fill line?

The flavor as best as I can describe it was at first, prior to conditioning, very mild tasting like a commercial Lite beer.  After the conditioning period it is a bit more harsh like a Budweiser.  There wasn't any ring at the fill line.  I thought it would have stayed at the taste it was at bottling.  As I have said I am new at this and this could be a normal occurrence.

Flat young beer & carbed conditioned beer should taste different.  I do not understand your fementation process??  What yeast did you use??  Why did you ferment a lager yeast at 70 plus degrees??  At four days I doubt if your fermentation was done.  You effectively cold crashed your yeast when you lagered at 36* for 3 months.  When I brew a lager I am generally fermenting at 50*, D-rest, then lager at 40*.  Please post your recipe and brewing details. 

I started this post without referring to my notes so Ok let me start again.  I was running two processes together here.  Referring to my notes, I fermented 4 days at 65deg then moved it to 50deg for 10 days then held it at 37deg for 12 weeks.  Then bottled and conditioned for 30 days at 62deg. 

victoria said:

I started this post without referring to my notes so Ok let me start again.  I was running two processes together here.  Referring to my notes, I fermented 4 days at 65deg then moved it to 50deg for 10 days then held it at 37deg for 12 weeks.  Then bottled and conditioned for 30 days at 62deg.

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Since you were using lager yeast, if you would have fermented at 50F for about two weeks or so, then raised the temp up to 65F and held it for a week, before dropping it slowly to 37 degrees and held it there, before bottlin gand conditioning for 30 days at 62F, you would have been pretty close to a lager yeast fermentation profile and you'd have gotten the cleaner flavors that you were after.

You've basically done a highbred steam beer fermentation profile.

Fermentation temperatures and times at those temperatures has a huge influence on the flavors of a beer.  If you'd have made 10 gallon batch and fermented them side by side, with the two different fermentation profiles, you'd have gotten two completely different beers, with all of the ingredients being identical.