bottled my first brew.

[bullet08]

it's belgian blone. i put some cherry in it, but i'm not tasted cherry anywhere. i should have crushed it before putting them in.

but the main question is, this brew doesn't taste anywhere i want it to be. it's was very light, and refreshing, but it's missing maltiness. i'm not sure if it's supposed to since i haven't really tasted any commercial belgian blone before.

also, i think i didn't sparge good and maybe it's lacking efficiency, the alcohol was rather low to the tasted.

it was only 1 gallon batch and my very first AG brew.

i'm using strainer over the pot and more or less dumping the sparge water over it. is there any better way to get all the sugar out? somewhere i heard grain bag might work better, but i don't really want to bother with cleaning the bag after the use and reusing it. not sure how to properly clean the grain bag.

pete

 

[unionrdr]

Maybe your mash temp was too high,giving more un-fermentable long chain sugars. They contribute more to color & flavor. Also less ABV.
To clean grain & hop sacks,I empty them by turning them inside out & shake/swipe the remains into a blue store bag. Then rinse under tap water to blow of as much stuff as I can. I then get a small sauce pan going with boiling water. Boil'em for 5 or 10 minutes. This helps loosen the stains,& get more of the graint stuff out of the weave of the sack's fabric. Then I use a tupperware container to put them in,covered with PBW solution. Put the lid on tight,& set aside for a week. From day to day,you can see the stains leaching out of the sack's fabric. Works quite well for me.

 

[RM-MN]

When you start going to all grain brewing, temperature control during mashing determines how your beer turns out. Too low and either you don't get conversion or you convert too much to simple sugars that ferment out and leave your beer thin and watery. Too high of temperatures can denature the enzymes that are needed for conversion or can create long chain sugars that will not ferment. Somewhere in the middle of that is "just right" but that range of temperatures is small and a very accurate thermometer is necessary to make sure you are in that "just right" range. My therometer was reading 4 degrees higher than the actual temperature of the wort and my beer fermented out to 1.002 instead of the 1.014 that it should have.

The nylon grain bags are so easy to clean that you should reconsider using one. I just dump mine out letting them turn inside out and shake off whatever loose grain will come off easy. Turn it back right side out, rinse out the sugar with hot water and then hang the bag to dry. Once dry I turn it inside out once more if there is significant grain stuck in there and just brush it lightly. If there is only a tiny amount of grain I just leave it. The next use will be to put more grain in there anyway and the dry grain won't mold or anything.

 

[unionrdr]

I probably should've mentioned that my method involves the muslin grain/hop sacks. They stain pretty easy,as stuff soaks into the fabric of the weave.