Amber Again...

My very first attempt at making beer was an Amber Ale extract kit from Northern Brewer. As certain people can attest, this beer was not good. It was down right awful. Of the paltry 35 bottles of the stuff I made, I think I still have 25 left. I have a feeling they will sit there unloved until I finally get around to dumping them out and using the bottles.

I still like the idea of having a nice Amber ale around, so I decided to have another go at this one. I figured I'd made a good amount of progress in my brewing skills and can better control fermentation temps now. So I picked up another Amber Ale kit from Northern Brewer. This time I went for an all grain kit, rather than extract. That alone will guarantee that this tastes different from the first one.

I brewed this up on the 4th of July in the early morning. I started at 7 am to beat the heat, but it was still scorching hot by the time I finished up around noon.

I missed my OG by 3 points, was expecting 1.047 got 1.044. This was due to overshooting my water amount a bit. I ended up with almost 5 1/2 gallons of water in the carboy and left another 1/2 gallon of break material in the kettle.

5 days later and fermentation is starting to die down. Looking forward to seeing how this turned out. Keeping my fingers crossed.

My first brew and the importance of temperature control

I decided to grab a bottle of my Amber Ale last night to see how it is coming along. It's been in the bottles nearly 3 weeks now and should be fully carbonated. I poured it into a glass, leaving the dredges behind. Still quite hazy, good head, nice carbonation. Looks like an amber ale, smells like an amber ale, does it taste like an amber ale? No, no it doesn't. After the first sip, I noted right away that the harsh alcohol taste was gone. I then noted that it tasted like someone dumped a whole crate of strawberries in it. Maybe a few bananas too. That might work for a hefeweizen, but that's no good for an amber.

I know where I went wrong here. It was just too warm. Being new to this, I didn't realize that the fermentation process would boost temps by 2-4 degrees. So while it was sitting in the low 70's, it pushed itself well above 75 for the bulk of the ferment. It and the Irish stout were the worst off, but the beers that follow have been far more closely monitored for temp.

I already picked up a temperature controller and will be grabbing a small chest freezer in the near future. That will allow me to keep a steady temperature and avoid this in the future. It also have the advantage of allowing me to lager. I'm looking forward to doing an Oktoberfest.

Drinking my first brew.

Here it is. The first beer I created with my own two hands. It's a bit hazy, but I can deal with that. Just over one week in the bottle and it's really conditioned nicely. Still has a bit of 'bite' to it, but I think that will mellow out in a couple of weeks

I got Shawn to take one sip, and she scrunched her face up in the worst way. She was polite enough not to spit it out and I appreciate that. Bah, she never liked good beer anyway!