Just to see what's involved in brewing beer, I did a 10-gallon batch (Heineken clone) on-premises at my LHBS. It was interesting on brew day: they used a malt extract and added the hops in pellet form. Two weeks later, it's done, or so they say. It's the right color, it's clear, it's well-carbed, but it doesn't taste very good. It's bitter and seriously lacks ... something important. Subtlety. Flavor. There's just the bitterness with nothing underneath it, if that describes it well enough. It's beer, but I take little pleasure in drinking it. I also suspect that there are impurities -- can't these give you hangovers? I can drink a lot of good beer in a session, but I have a hunch that I can't drink a lot of this beer.
My understanding is that lager requires conditioning, and two weeks from brew day will not be enough time. It's also my understanding that you need the yeast to do the conditioning, but these guys filtered into the keg after fermentation. Now, they say, it will only keep 6-12 weeks depending on how cold I keep it.
I can see how their method suits their bottom line. They can turn around a batch of beer in two weeks, and some types of beer might not suffer from this kind of treatment. The beer I got looks good, it's beer, and it's a lot cheaper than paying the Canadian tax at the beer store. It might even improve a bit in the bottle, even though it was filtered? But I like beer that tastes good.
Here's what bothers me, though. They sell cornies (actually they're pretty well-stocked with beer-making stuff -- sometimes they have sankes in stock as well) but the guy told me that you have to filter into the cornies to avoid messing up the lines, which goes against everything I've read. I want to make nice lagers by lagering them in the cornies.
This was not that great an experience. I won't be making any more beer with these guys, but I'll buy my supplies there, I guess. It shouldn't be too hard to do better on my own, starting with simple beers using malt extracts, right?
My understanding is that lager requires conditioning, and two weeks from brew day will not be enough time. It's also my understanding that you need the yeast to do the conditioning, but these guys filtered into the keg after fermentation. Now, they say, it will only keep 6-12 weeks depending on how cold I keep it.
I can see how their method suits their bottom line. They can turn around a batch of beer in two weeks, and some types of beer might not suffer from this kind of treatment. The beer I got looks good, it's beer, and it's a lot cheaper than paying the Canadian tax at the beer store. It might even improve a bit in the bottle, even though it was filtered? But I like beer that tastes good.
Here's what bothers me, though. They sell cornies (actually they're pretty well-stocked with beer-making stuff -- sometimes they have sankes in stock as well) but the guy told me that you have to filter into the cornies to avoid messing up the lines, which goes against everything I've read. I want to make nice lagers by lagering them in the cornies.
This was not that great an experience. I won't be making any more beer with these guys, but I'll buy my supplies there, I guess. It shouldn't be too hard to do better on my own, starting with simple beers using malt extracts, right?
