david_42 said:
Don't knock "incredibly mediocre Browns", they've converted more than one person. Ditto Milds.
I'm not knocking Browns in general. I'm knocking my Brown in particular.
I was wanting to make a ginger ale and I found a recipe. I didn't overly analyze it before I made it. It turns out that its a Brown Ale recipe that someone just added ginger to. I don't think a Brown Ale is the right kind of beer to add ginger too. If I do it again, I'll either do a Cream Ale with a lot of ginger and steal hops from my pLambic bag or I'll do a sparkling ginger mead and bottle it in the smallest champaign bottles I can find.
Anyway the problems I had along the way included:
1. accidently dumping one of my wife's orchids into the primary after it was sanitized. Had to rewash and resanitize.
2. steeped grains too hot.
2. torn hop bag.
3. plugged siphon due to torn hop bag.
4. I wasn't able to keep the ginger pieces from getting into the primary because of the plugged siphon.
5. Either my o.g. reading was way off or it came out extremely weak.
To sumarize, it was my worst brew day so far.
The main problem with the flavor is the hop bitterness and the ginger didn't come out as seperate flavors. It all comes across together as a very strong and astrigent hop bitterness.