Tonight's the moment of truth

After weeks of bottle-conditioning, my first brew (a Vietnamese-style pale ale) will be tasted. We're having a beer-tasting party at my friend's house. Mine will be tasted along with new beers (Oktoberfest and Raspberry Stout) from two of my other friends who homebrew. I'll let you all know how it goes. I'm really excited.

What, he asked after checking MFDave's recipe tab, is a Vietnamese pale ale?

I loves me some pho but haven't noticed VN beer sold at the pho places I haunt.

My wife is viet and she says vietnamese people just drink Heineken

You haven't even tried it yet? Ballsy

What does a Vietnamese beer taste like? haha

I hope it doesn't taste like Nukman (sp?) lol

It's not so much a straight Vietnamese beer, but done in the style. So I used rice water, brewed it with a lot of bittering hops and I added ginger. It turned out pretty good. Very very strong ginger flavor. I'm just happy it didn't taste like poison. Some of my friends liked it a lot (the fellow homebrewers) while some were taken aback by the strong bitter flavor (mostly because they're used to drinking Bud & Miller). All in all, it was a good experience and I'm already set up to do my next set of beers (plus some apfelwein).

The only Vietnamese beer I tried was a light & tasty lager called "33 Export". It had more flavor than a BMC - but was similar in style. Very drinkable, but not much of anything exotic. I seem to recall it had a white & red label w/ metallic foil, and a stylized tiger in the logo.

The sushii and the company made the evening memorable, not the beer.

My father-in-law drank 33 when he was deployed in Vietnam. The vietnamese 33 sounds a bit like bah-mui-bah, but the GIs just called it Bombitty-Bomb. I guess it was usually served warm and tasted bad, but they didn't care. I've had more than one veteran mention that beer.