I couldn’t wait any longer, so last night I cracked open my first bottle of my first batch of beer. While I found it lacking in a few areas, I am reasonably pleased with how the B.\u00a0Brewery’s first beer, Naismith Nut Brown Ale, turned out.<\/p>\n
My first concern, as I mentioned last week, was that I had presented too much oxygen in the bottling process and there might be some off odors\/flavors present. First thing I did last night was smell the beer. All I smelled was the pleasant, malty, nuttiness you expect from a brown ale. When I poured it, the beer produced a terrific head, a sign the bottle conditining had worked properly. Another sniff before tasting and still no off odors. Then the first taste. It was pretty darn good. I don’t think anyone would confuse it with a quality brown ale you would get from a microbrewer, but the beer had the lingering maltiness that I love from the style.1<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n The beer continued to drink well as I worked through the glass, but a couple issues popped up. First, if anything the beer was over-carbonated. I left too much liquid behind when I poured from the boiling kettle to the fermenter, so my final yield was 43 bottles instead of the 50 or so that I should have got. I guess that was a big enough discrepancy to make the final product a little too bubbly.<\/p>\n Second, the flavor is not quite as full as I would expect or prefer. I don’t know if it’s the carbonation that is hiding the flavor or something else. I would say 80% of the taste is fine, but you don’t get hit with the delicious, nut-browniness at the beginning of your sip. I’m going to send a couple bottles to one of my brothers in brewing and see what his thoughts are.<\/p>\n But overall I’m very pleased with the final result. This is only based on one bottle, so hopefully that will still be true as I drink more and the beer ages a little more. My biggest concern about home brewing was doing something wrong and having two cases of beer that I didn’t like and couldn’t get rid of. That’s not a problem, which for a first batch, is enough to call it a success.<\/p>\n Now I have to figure out what to brew next.<\/p>\n \u2181<\/p>\n