First "real" brew, Irish red ale.

Oh yea, and my bucket still smells like beer, lol.

grimstuff said:

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In retrospect, I highly recommend letting this one sit for at least 3 weeks after bottling. Not sure if I'd make it again, being that I'm moving into all-grain, and there are tons of other beers i want to make, but as a first beer I couldn't be more pleased. Everyone who's tasted it says it's great. It was a good confidence-booster to continue brewing.

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Glad to hear you've had great reception! I hope for the same. I can tell tasting it during bottling that it'll need to condition for a bit to really turn good. That's why I sealed the boxes to keep myself out of it! lol. The one I left out was the final bottle I made and was a spare red stripe bottle I had floating about.

I ordered the Liberty Cream Ale from Midwest last night and also the Black Dog Ale. Those will be my next brews. I haven't decided if I'm going to run them concurrently or not yet.

Cheers.

After the Irish Red turned out good, I ordered the Imperial Stout and California Steam. The IS is in secondary, and the Steam is in primary out in the garage. I feel good about both of them, since my method was better and all I did was follow directions. My next batches will be all-grain, so I'm looking forward to comparing the extract+steeped grains recipes against the all-grain.

When I can afford the additional equipment I'm going to get into all grain. I want to play in extract land to build up the stock and get the method down pat then I'll make the jump.

I bought the starter kit with Irish Red after brewing about 8 extract kits from other vendor and a few all grains batches mainly for the equipment. I wanted some dedicated gear for sour beers. I noticed that the Munton yeast they give you seems to get stuck a 1.018-1.020. My buddies Amber Ale did the same thing and took a while to carb. There were some strange off tastes that haven't corrected with time yet. The next kit I bought from them was a porter and I used Danstar Nottingham I had instead and it fermented out better. I wish they would supply a better yeast and raise the price $1, but it seems the kit is focused on price. I also thought it was lacking in the hops department and would probably add the last hop addition at 10-15 minutes instead of the very end. It is a decent deal, but could turn beginners off with the resulting beer when they expect something amazing. IMHO

In the next 2 kits I ordered their "premium" yeast (midwest) so we'll see if that makes a difference. I may also re-hydrate the yeast this time around instead of throwing it in dry. Guess we'll see how I feel come that point! lol.