So I just finished bottling my first period beer, well, my first beer ever to be honest. When I was bottling the beer, I put some in a mug, let the yeast settle (though it was still cloudy) and tasted it. I found the aroma to be quite pleasant, but was a little surprised with the bitterness of the beer and the strong aftertaste. Will this go away as the beer ages/carbonates in the bottle or is it simply supposed to be like this? I've never had anything but commercial brews, so it could just be that I have an unrefined palate. Here's the recipe I used. It is adapted to a 5 gallon recipe from Richard Arnolds Chronicles.
8 lbs. English Pale Malt (I toasted about 1 pound in the oven to mimic medieval techniques)
1.5 lbs. Wheat malt
1.5 lbs. oats
1.5 oz. Fuggle hops
Nottingham Ale yeast
I put all the malt in a cooler, and poured 7 gallons of boiling water on top of the malt from two feet above. The temperature was about 150F when I was done and I closed the lid and let the enzymes do their stuff. After three hours, I emptied the contents into a fermentation bucket. I was only able to get 4 gallons out of the cooler, so I poured another gallon into the cooler and drained that into the bucket. I didn't have a pot large enough to boil all five gallons, so I added the hops to 2 gallons of wort and boiled that for an hour then added it to the wort. (I assumed the only consequence would be that the enzymes wouldn't be killed and the proteins wouldn't break up) I poured my yeast in the next morning once the wort had reached room temperature. Fermentation stopped after six days. I added gelatin, and 15 hrs. later, bottled and capped the beer. Was all of this correct, or did I mess up somewhere?
8 lbs. English Pale Malt (I toasted about 1 pound in the oven to mimic medieval techniques)
1.5 lbs. Wheat malt
1.5 lbs. oats
1.5 oz. Fuggle hops
Nottingham Ale yeast
I put all the malt in a cooler, and poured 7 gallons of boiling water on top of the malt from two feet above. The temperature was about 150F when I was done and I closed the lid and let the enzymes do their stuff. After three hours, I emptied the contents into a fermentation bucket. I was only able to get 4 gallons out of the cooler, so I poured another gallon into the cooler and drained that into the bucket. I didn't have a pot large enough to boil all five gallons, so I added the hops to 2 gallons of wort and boiled that for an hour then added it to the wort. (I assumed the only consequence would be that the enzymes wouldn't be killed and the proteins wouldn't break up) I poured my yeast in the next morning once the wort had reached room temperature. Fermentation stopped after six days. I added gelatin, and 15 hrs. later, bottled and capped the beer. Was all of this correct, or did I mess up somewhere?