Hi, my name is JD and I bottled my first batch of beer about a week ago. Me and my roomate got into it and fumbled our way through the process by reading through forums like this one.
The recipe we used calls for three weeks in the bottle before we drink, but we went ahead and drank one each at the one-week mark. I've got a few questions that I can't figure an answer to.
The first is the smell of the beer. The beer actually tastes great, but it just smells terrible. This isn't normal bad smelling beer either- you can smell it across the room. Now, we think this is because the messed up the recipe a bit. For the recipe we were supposed to first add an ounce of Northern Brewer (bittering) hops for 60 minutes, and then two stages of Willamette (flavoring) hops for a shorter amount of time. We mixed our hops up and put the flavoring in for 60 minutes, and the bittering hops in second. Is this what causes the smell? Or is it just that it has only been bottled for a week?
Also, the beer feels extremely alcoholic, but it tastes normal. Drinking one of our beers feels like two or two and a half of store-beer. Tragically, we don't know the alcoholic content because my roommate dropped and shattered the Hydrometer right before we were about to take our initial reading. The beer we brewed spent about five or six days in the primary fermenter and five or six more in the secondary fermenter before we bottled it (we waited until about a day after the bubbles stopped in both cases). Is the alcoholic level that we're feeling a result of brewing for too short? Too long? Or is brewing at home just more amazing?
These questions aside, the beer is fantastic and I can't wait until it finishes carbonating. It tastes great but just needs a bit of tuning.
The recipe we used calls for three weeks in the bottle before we drink, but we went ahead and drank one each at the one-week mark. I've got a few questions that I can't figure an answer to.
The first is the smell of the beer. The beer actually tastes great, but it just smells terrible. This isn't normal bad smelling beer either- you can smell it across the room. Now, we think this is because the messed up the recipe a bit. For the recipe we were supposed to first add an ounce of Northern Brewer (bittering) hops for 60 minutes, and then two stages of Willamette (flavoring) hops for a shorter amount of time. We mixed our hops up and put the flavoring in for 60 minutes, and the bittering hops in second. Is this what causes the smell? Or is it just that it has only been bottled for a week?
Also, the beer feels extremely alcoholic, but it tastes normal. Drinking one of our beers feels like two or two and a half of store-beer. Tragically, we don't know the alcoholic content because my roommate dropped and shattered the Hydrometer right before we were about to take our initial reading. The beer we brewed spent about five or six days in the primary fermenter and five or six more in the secondary fermenter before we bottled it (we waited until about a day after the bubbles stopped in both cases). Is the alcoholic level that we're feeling a result of brewing for too short? Too long? Or is brewing at home just more amazing?
These questions aside, the beer is fantastic and I can't wait until it finishes carbonating. It tastes great but just needs a bit of tuning.