My first born

here it is, the result of my very first batch.



And I must say, it tasts great, im never buying beer again, (unless its for the bottles, or a beer emergency) this stuff turned out better than I ever expected, considering I fudged the recipie due to lack of supplies.

porter, schwarzbeir, stout....nice head retention

Congrats, that looks tasty!

From the beer snob in me: try it without the frozen mug. You may find that it helps with head retention (not that there's an apparent problem), and, more importantly, that it opens up the flavor a bit as the beer warms slightly.

+1 on drinking beer as it warms. I enjoy taking my time with a glass of beer just to see how the flavor changes with temperature.

As you develop your pallete and understanding of beer you will undertand that a frozen mug leads to ... Frozen beer. Who wants to drink a beer slushie? (Actually, 7/11 might want to consider that one... Hmmmmm.) Beer is meant to be enjoyed at a reasonable temperature. Frozen beer loses it's taste. Unless you are drinking BMC at breakneck speed before heading into the stadium/concert/etc. you probably want to taste and enjoy what you are drinking. You can't do that if you are drinking a slushy. The intense cold numbs your taste buds. NTM, the slushy ice that forms in your glass totallly changes the taste of what you are drinking. It concentrates everything and trows the beer totally out of ballance.

Here's an example. In the fall we often pick apples, crush them and let the natural yeast on them ferment them and get a farmers hard cider. Then we put the hard cider out on teh porch mid winter and allow the cider to freeze to a semi-slush, then scoop out the slush. The concentrate left behind is MUCH higher in alcohol and taste. Sort of a low tech distilling. Don't much up your homebrew by doing that to it. If you want hooch, make hooch. If you want deer, stick to beer.

You'll still buy beer, more than likely. I have more beer than I could possibly consume right now, but I still buy some stuff here and there. No matter how good your beer is, there are things that we often can't duplicate. For instance, try as I might, I would put good money on the fact that I could never accurately clone Hanssen's Oude Kriek. Hell, I tried my damnedest to clone Rochefort 10, and while it's great beer, it's not the same. So don't abandon commercial brews altogether. It's good to step outside your box here and there...and sometimes it's nice to be able to just pay $15 for a bottle of brett-infected, oak-aged Allagash, rather than having to wait the year or two that it would take for you to make it and age it on your own.

Now that looks fantastic!
Nice Job!

Not sure what to call it, so Im calling it first born, its 6 lbs dark extract, and willimette hopps, and coopers yeast.

Im working on 2 more batches now, one is pale 2 row malt, brown sugar, and cayenne pepper. the other is honey ginger beer, a braggot I guess.

Looks good!
Personally I love cold beer. I'm not much a snob though in that area.
I just prefer all my liquids colder as opposed to warmer...unless its coffee and then it needs to be very hot lol.

Different strokes....

:rockin: :rockin:

I was at a friend's house last night with some of my homebrews along for tasting and he is a frozen glass guy - likes to use a fresh one out of the freezer every pour. I convinced him finally after many of these sampling sessions that a room temp glass at the pour allows the beer to reveal itself over the duration of consumption instead of just tasting mostly the same all the way through. The flavors and characteristics of a beer change as the temp warms - especially in your stouts and porters.

Woo Hoo!

Welcome to the sickness

I second what Evan! says though, I always chalk commercial purchases up to my 'beer education' :fro:

looks very nice .. I like the Cayenne pepper one. Anything with hot spice is ok with me

what's a braggot? anyways, i'm getting on the frozen bandwagon. went to a new local brewpub and the bartender was serving my beers into a frozen mug. this happened on two visits before i asked for a regular mug. the bartenders poured about 3 pints before they got the head down. wonder what the brewer would think?

i'm no braggot, your a braggot! pictures of beer make me want one!

zoebisch01 said:

Woo Hoo!

Welcome to the sickness

I second what Evan! says though, I always chalk commercial purchases up to my 'beer education' :fro:

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I think I buy MORE beer since I've been homebrewing, just so I can try different styles! After all, if I haven't tried it, I don't know if I want to try to make it

The commercial beer buying is slowing down a bit lately though, as more of my homebrew becomes ready to drink.

Now that I've been brewing pretty regularly and have some decent stuff coming of age, I've been buying less commercial stuff. However, there's always the overwelming temptation to buy oddball beers for "research" purposes.

SWMBO would love it if I wasn't still buying beer... However I haven't been able to brew enough yet to stop buying commercial beer. Right now I do have 5 gal being dry hopped, could probably bottle it this weekend if I wanted to, and 5 gal in primary. So hopefully that will slow down my commercial buying for a bit. Also, I'm thinking about dry hopping my primary in my primary vessel and not going to secondary, just bottling out of primary. That might save me a week or so of conditioning...

Anyone find it odd that this thread has had over 1,100 views yet only 16 replies? What are people looking for here?

Beerrific said:

Anyone find it odd that this thread has had over 1,100 views yet only 16 replies? What are people looking for here?

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Pics of his first born being born?