My first homebrew was an experience that taught me a lot but had poor taste results. My second attempt, an American IPA, turned out much, much better. As one would expect my IPA was full of hoppy goodness. Since I’m still new I decided to use a kit from the fine folks at American Brewmaster. The recipe I used called for Summit, Centennial, Cascade and Amarillo. I decided to add Columbus for a short dry hop as a way to make the recipe my own.

After brewing I kept in primary for 10 days and then racked into a secondary for dry hoping. While I probably didn’t need to move to secondary to dry hop I decided it was worth doing due to my worry about keeping the beer on the trub too long (I know now it takes a lot longer than a few weeks to cause a problem ..). Next I dry hopped in secondary for 4 days. Why four days? Mainly because I really wanted to find out if my brew worked out this time and couldn’t wait. So after four days I racked to my bottle bucket with my carb sugar, filled the bottles and capped.

After 1 week of bottle conditioning I decided to see how well carbonation was coming along. This is what I saw after an aggressive pour.

I was happily shocked. I was not expecting so much carbonation so quickly! My first brew never got half that carb’d! Like my first try the aroma was amazing but I knew the kicker would come with a first taste. So I took a few bottles and threw them in the fridge for tasting later.

I pulled the bottle and shared it for a testing. Both of us agreed it was quite good. It cleared up a bit compared to the above picture but it still needed some time to settle. Here is my review (of my own beer so take it with a grain of salt…).

Sciential Ale Labs: Test Batch #2

Appearance

Hazy. Color similar to Lagunitas IPA. A finger and a half of slightly off white head which slowly dissipates into small layer of persistant head.

Smell

Slight pine with earthy/herbal notes. Nothing overpowering. Reminds me more of a pale ale.

Taste

Nice and bitter but balanced well with a malty backbone. There is also a very slight ester profile as well which surprisingly works in the brews favor adding a bit of fruit complexity. The hop profile is hard for me to really explain but the closest comercial beer I can equate the bitterness portion of flavor with would be Sierra Nevada‘s Torpedo. As the ale warmed up the bitterness came through even more. Even nearing room temperature the beer still was tasty!

Mouthfeel

Medium mouthfeel with consistant carbonation. Possibly a little creamier than should be due to things still not being settled.

Overall

Happily surprised. For me this is a pretty unique beer (though is probably pretty common in homebrew circles). My rating is 4/5 stars.

Others

I’ve gotten two pieces of feed back so far on my first successful homebrew. The first was simply “Oh, that’s good!” during the shared tasting. The other was an unsolicited text from a friend when he popped the cap and gave it a whirl: “Your beer is excellent.” That feedback made me feel pretty good.

On Deck

I’ve since brewed an Abbey Dubbel and a single hop American Pale Ale of my own design. Both are in primary. If both of these come through successfully I’ll feel pretty confident in my process.