The Beer Turned Out – OK!
Finally bottled the batch of beer. It was my first attempt at beer making, and so I was unsure of how the final results would turn out. For around $18.00 worth of ingredients, and probably 90 minutes in total time, I ended up with 47 half litre bottles of beer.
I’m not much of a beer drinker although I do like a good cold one on hot summer days. My friend Roy came by after the bottling was done and he was the first one to give it a try. After the first sip, in his Cape Breton accent, pronounced the beer, “hey, that’s pretty good stuff!”
I guess that’s not really saying all that much for a guy that drinks regular Canadian brewed swill, but at least it passed the test of being a bit better than swill 
.
I’ll have to make sure there are some bottles left so that when Wendy gets home next week, she’ll be able to try it.
I don’t know if your first batch was the white beer or the red… but I tried both, and I can say the white was a little difficult to drink, and I must confess I drank is slowly enough that I didn’t have time to finish the bottle. However, the red was quite nice, and I enjoyed it to the end. These were the first home-made beers I have ever tried, and I would be encouraged now to try making my own some time.
The white had an off-taste similar to the off-taste I found in a batch of homemade soda pop that I attempted a couple of years ago. I’m not sure how to describe it… perhaps it was an excessive yeastiness(?)
I wonder what these would be like filtered? Have you tried filtering beer? Can it be done easily at home, or would you have to take your batch to a U-Brew place and get them to do it for you?
Thanks for your comments, Andrew. That’s interesting about the lager not tasting so good for you. I haven’t tried one myself – so I’ll get someone else’s opinion as well.
As far as filtering beer – good question. I suppose you could do that if you had a way to carbonate it – home brew usually does have some yeast in the final product as that, along with a bit of extra sugar at bottling time, help to provide carbonation.
The off-taste could be caused by timing. Either sitting too long in the primary fermenter, or bottling too soon.
Or maybe just a bad kit.
I usually go about a week in the primary, and 2 weeks clearing in the secondary. Been brewing for about 20 years, only had 1 batch that was bad, and that was because I was in a rush to bottle – I was moving and didn’t want to transport a full carboy.
Filtering might take out some of the sediment you’re finding in your bottles, but won’t do anything to the taste.