1st Brew...SUCCESS!!

So it's been 10 days since bottling my honey lager, and I've been patiently waiting to chill one of these bad boys and test it, worried the whole time I screwed something up. I'm having a party tomorrow, everyone knows about the homebrew, and we're going to cook up 60lbs of salmon (from a fishing trip) and suck back the beers I made up. There has been a lot riding on this...

There is one major problem though......I can't stop drinking it! I just cracked the first bottle after letting it chill in the fridge for an hour or so, and it's so damn tasty I just put 2 more in the fridge and one in the freezer (time is of the essence here, I'm thirsty). I intend to see if homebrew lightens the next day hangover at this rate!

Anyways, this is a big shout out to all you homebrewers out there. I couldn't have done it without this forum! You guys have been a HUGE source of info!!



TO THE FRIDGE!!!!!

Sounds really neat. I hope to achieve such satisfaction on my first batch.

Congrats on the brew !
Make sure you save a few for 2 months, three months, and 4 months...just so you can see what a mature beer tastes like....I know, its a hard thing to do.

Cheers.

He's cooking 60 pounds of salmon. That much fish implies anywhere from 20 to 30 people (20 big eaters, 30 average eaters). It'll feed even more if you have other stuff to go with it. If it was a 5 gallon batch, then he got 53 bottles out of it. He's been drinking it in the meantime.

It doesn't sound like he'll have any to sample in two, three, or four months...

I now leave beer @ my mom's house who lives about an hour and a half away from me.....She would never drink it, so I know its safe for later sampling.

Cheers.

just curious.

what was the recipe?

Extract?

there seems to be a contingent of the opinion that Extract results in funky beer.

Personally i think it's a sanitation issue, but I'm just curious.

I so remeber pounding down my first batch as well.

it was VERY green, had HUGE underaged bubbles, but it was GOOD AS HELL, and propbaly ~5.5% too!

I remember getting toasted off my first batch....suprisingly I wasn't as hung over as I would have been if I'd knocked back that many Sam Adams. Probably has something to do with the %abv, but let's just say that homebrew is "cleaner". It makes us all feel better.

It was a honey brown kit (pretty straight forward) where all you do is empty out the bladder into your primary, add water and the yeast, and let 'er ferment. I conditioned it for 2 weeks in the secondary after reading through the forums (seemed like a good thing to do). Everything was pre-measured, so I figured it was a good way to start before I light my kitchen on fire, or brew up 48 beer grenades.

I sanitized the sh*t out of EVERYTHING I was using. Bleached my hands, siphon, carboys, primary, bottles, airlocks.....absolutely everything that came anywhere near my beer was cleaned out. I couldn't taste anything out of the ordinary when I was drinking it last night, but I was pretty excited and didn't pay a lot attention to my pallet. I'll get a group consensus later.

It's still a little flat (but not really...has a nice head when I pour it but loses some carbonation closer to the bottom of the mug) but overall tastes like any honey brown you would buy in a store. I have no idea what the % is right now though, I'll test it tonight when 2 or 3 bottles are cracked.

And yes, 20 people, 3 BBQ's, wine, my beer, and whatever else gets brought over will be consumed this evening. I'm going to do a few more of the kits later this week, just so I'm sure I know what I'm doing, then move forward on a brew from scratch. Can't wait!

awesome!

if it was funky, you'd have known.

mattfdc said:

It's still a little flat (but not really...has a nice head when I pour it but loses some carbonation closer to the bottom of the mug)

Click to expand...

Both my beers came out this way. If you pour it against the side of the glass half way then pour aggressively down the middle the rest it has about a 1 finger head but doesn't last long. However it does remain with a thin (1/8 in.?) head right to the bottom of the glass. If I pour more aggressively I get a huge head but again it dissipates quickly.
I'm not sure what causes this but I'd be interested in hearing anyones clues.
I don't uses soap in my beer glasses.


Congrats on the 1st brew!! Feels great doesn't it?

Tommy