Hey everyone, I've been lurking here for awhile trying to learn as much about brewing on the beginner's board while we brewed our first beers. Sorry that this is so long, but we are trying to figure out what we did here. Now that we've bottled and tried two batches, we have a few questions. We started out with two separate extract kits from our local brew store that both had specialty grains. The first we tried was an amber ale, and then a week later a blonde ale. I don't have the recipes here with me, so I can't tell you exactly what was in them. Here's what happened...
We did the amber ale first and everything seemed to go alright. We put it in the plastic pale that was included in our beginner's kit. We let it sit a week, and had a stable gravity, so we transferred it to a glass carboy per the instructions. At this point we made the blonde ale, and put that in the plastic pale after cleaning and sanitizing. We did not use a secondary fermenter for the blonde ale, but left it in the primary. We waited 2 more weeks, and then bottled both batches at the same time. We tasted them before we put them in the bottles, and found the blonde ale to taste pretty good, but the amber to taste somewhat funny.
After two weeks in the bottles we decided to try one of each. The blonde ale had very good carbonation, but was pretty bland. There was very little flavor, except for a little hop flavor at the end. We were very close with our Gravity, and it doesn't taste like its been contaminated, but it doesn't taste like a whole lot. Will this change with a little more age on it? Another brewer told us that the kit might not have been a good recipe.
As for the amber ale, it tasted terrible. It tastes like a sour apple cider, and has no carbonation. We're going to let it sit for a while, but I'm guessing that we contaminated this one. We used the one step sanitizer it came with, would we better off using something different? Also, when we cooled the wort in an ice bath for quite a while, we did not cover it. Is the ice bath the best way to go for a 5 gallon recipe, and would not covering it have an effect?
We did the amber ale first and everything seemed to go alright. We put it in the plastic pale that was included in our beginner's kit. We let it sit a week, and had a stable gravity, so we transferred it to a glass carboy per the instructions. At this point we made the blonde ale, and put that in the plastic pale after cleaning and sanitizing. We did not use a secondary fermenter for the blonde ale, but left it in the primary. We waited 2 more weeks, and then bottled both batches at the same time. We tasted them before we put them in the bottles, and found the blonde ale to taste pretty good, but the amber to taste somewhat funny.
After two weeks in the bottles we decided to try one of each. The blonde ale had very good carbonation, but was pretty bland. There was very little flavor, except for a little hop flavor at the end. We were very close with our Gravity, and it doesn't taste like its been contaminated, but it doesn't taste like a whole lot. Will this change with a little more age on it? Another brewer told us that the kit might not have been a good recipe.
As for the amber ale, it tasted terrible. It tastes like a sour apple cider, and has no carbonation. We're going to let it sit for a while, but I'm guessing that we contaminated this one. We used the one step sanitizer it came with, would we better off using something different? Also, when we cooled the wort in an ice bath for quite a while, we did not cover it. Is the ice bath the best way to go for a 5 gallon recipe, and would not covering it have an effect?
