Matt's beer... Take one

As you likely saw in my last post, I have taken a shot at brewing at home. It was with much debate and study of the beer making book that I got for Christmas. With the beer making kit I got, there was just enough ingredients, grains, hops, yeast and sanitizer to make one batch. Due to this, I felt the pressure of not having a margin for error. If I only had one initial chance, I wanted to make it good.

After much anticipation, I cracked open my first bottle on Wednesday evening. Much to my surprise, opening it provided the typical beer hiss and puff of cold beer cloud up through the bottle. So far so good. Upon pouring it, it looked like beer. Smelling it, it smelled like beer. Tasting it, it tasted like beer. That provided enough evidence that I actually made a drinkable beer.

Appearance: The beer poured a highly carbonated golden color with some haze. I was most concerned about the carbonation or lack there of. When I bottled the beer, I could tell the color and smell were beer like, but the carbonation developed in the bottles and I had some doubts. Unfortunately I did make a mistake with the bottling and too much of the yeasty sediment ended up in the pot and ultimately in the bottles, hence the haze. The beer did provide some nice head, but not a tremendous amount of lacing on the glass. All in all, it looked like a beer.

Smell: Not much here except a yeasty smell. The hops are not aggressive and did not provide much of a scent. It smelled like a beer.

Taste/Mouthfeel: Mouthfeel was light side of medium with the carbonation noted. The taste again was primarily a bready one due to too much yeast. I did get some floral and grassy hop flavor, but it was faint. It tasted like a beer.

Overall: As much as I am proud of making something that is drinkable, I am disappointed in letting too much of the sediment in and affecting the flavor. I used to wonder why my home brewer friend would be so critical of the batches he made that were excellent to me. I now understand being my own toughest critic.

Much like most things in life, there is always room for improvement. For a first time out, I will give myself a B-. Luckily I think I have an A+ batch fermenting as I type. Now if I can only get it into the bottle correctly. I will keep on trying.

Cheers!