How Did Your First Brew Taste?

[stef]

Cracked open the first bottle of my first brew the other day... it wasnt great!

Just a kit from the LHBS (Cascade premium lager), with reasonable quality ingredients (different yeast etc) but still just a kit beer. It didnt taste like beer! Only been bottled for a week, which i know isnt long enough, but i was curious. I dont think anything went wrong in the actual brewing- kept at consistent temp (15 degrees, in an under ground cellar), i was pretty damn thorough with cleaning and sterilizing (paranoid about getting it infected) and it didnt smell smell or look off or infected.

Wasnt carbonated, overly bitter, generally had a pretty puckering flavour and a strange, very orange colour. Hopefully it gets better with age! I'm planning to try another brew later in the week with a couple of additives, but i gotta say i'm not as excited about it now...

Anyone else had similar experiences with their first few brews?

Stef.

 

[manticle]

First one was OK - overgassed and not what I'd hoped for. You can't expect your first straight kit brew to give you perfect beer. Keep at it.

You'll notice a big difference after a few more weeks too.

 

[BjornJ]

My first beer was the Coopers Lager that came with the homebrew kit.
Watched the DVD and read the printed instructions, so pitched yeast as soon as the wort was under 28 degrees.
Fermented in the cupboard in mid-January...
I called it the "scando lager" and it tasted like a mix of unleaded fuel and ...something else you wouldn;t drink.

 

[Lecterfan]

I know you didn't necassarily intend it, but this is actually a pretty awesome idea for a thread. I've finished in the veg garden for the day so am just onto my second beer for the day and have enthusiastically dug out my old brewing notes.

Nowadays I type a paragraph at the bottom of Beersmith, but this one beer has 3 pages of notes!!!

05.10.2005 It was a LHBS Stout with a stout improver/brewcraft type mix, used the kit yeast. I was racking and bulk priming from brew 1 onwards as that was what I learned vicariously through the two major homebrewing influences I had. My notes say it was flat for at least the first month in the bottle, but the last note was around 4 mnths in the bottle and it had a good head, was carbed nicely for a stout and didn't taste like total shit.

As Manticle said, give it time. It might not be what you are after but a few more weeks in the bottle will do it the world of good.

But if you like the process, don't wait until you've drunk all the first one before brewing the second. Get stuck in! Your doctor will hate it but your wallet and taste buds will thank you (eventually).

 

[Nick JD]

It was 25 years ago - can't remember, probably pretty bad, but I drank the lot regardless being young and drunken.

It's difficult to make kit beer that tastes like "bought" beer. Actually, damn near impossible.

The main reason is because beer is not made from dehydrated malt and chemical hops with a kg of sucrose. It's like trying to make espresso coffee with Nescafe Blend 43 ... not gonna happen.

A well-made kit beer is very drinkable though, but it needs much love, attention and time to get better.

Perhaps check out doing "extract" using real hops and some steeped grains. It's pretty easy and the improvement over kits is significant.

 

[DU99]

my first few brews where very little carbonation,tasted ok..my problem was i got over zealous with the bleach..have changed to "napisan" and idophor.....

 

[Sydneybrewer]

The first ever beer i made tasted like burning... I was given an extra lager tin so my first was a 2 can coopers lager 1kg table suger and fermented at 30+ degrees and i even had it sitting in the sunlight through the window in order to maintain the temp 30+

 

[DUANNE]

my first beer was very ordinary. i actually had a beer from my third or fourth batch a couple of days ago and it was overcarbed and very apply in flavour. even after 3 years sitting in the back of a fridge it still tasted bad. thank god i know a bit more about proper cleaning and sanitation now.

 

[govorko1974]

My first brew i thought at the time was ok...although only just done my 5th brew have learnt so much from this site that i tried the last bottle of it the other day....had one mouthfull and tipped it down the sink....it was RANK...no idea how i drank 29 of them before then...keep at it..get a fridgemate and you will find your beer improved thru the roof

 

[Newbiebrewer]

Yeah my first was a coopers lager, with tasted like crap because I had it fermenting pretty hot. Definately not the best brew, however it was an improvement upon the commercial offerings.

 

[Dazza_devil]

Thanks to AHB my first beer was very good, no complaints at all.
A Munton's Nut Brown Ale kit with a bit of dex made up to 20 litres.
I read up on here for almost 12 months before taking the plunge and investing in the necceassary implements to brew.
There's no better place to learn how to brew than here.
Cheers.

 

[pk.sax]

My first one was a coopers lager too, real recent it tasted crap (rough n bitter cuz of the hop tablet) 2 weeks bottled, now, its smoothed out and actually makes for a rather easy drinking beer. Second one, I opened one yesterday a week into bottling - taste crap cuz of the unfermented sugar. I'm kinda wishing i'd hopped it more aggressively :S it tasted quite OK out of the fermenter b4 priming.

 

[jakub76]

At a week in the bottle it's still active, give it another two weeks and you'll be happier...another 4-8 weeks and it'll be about as good as it's going to get.

My first was a Coopers Bitter kit, I was 15 and happy to be drinking any beer I could get my hands on. I had a friend tell me it was better than commercial beer, I wasn't so sure but it certainly buoyed my enthusiasm.

Making more robust and flavourful styles allows you a lot more grace while you're perfecting your process. I spent several years happily brewing bitter and stout kits with minimal additions before exploring extract or AG brewing.

 

[lordofthebottleshop]

my first few brews where very little carbonation,tasted ok..my problem was i got over zealous with the bleach..have changed to "napisan" and idophor.....

Oh I've been there, many times. That crisp, clean, bleach flavour is only slightly better than sea water :icon_vomit: .

My first brew was the coopers can that came with my home brew kit, and 1kg of LDME. I have to say, it was a bit ordinary. Best thing I can suggest before getting too complicated is getting one of those bags of finishing hops from your LHBS, and dry hopping it. Once you taste what a little bit of hops will do, you'll dive headlong into the more advanced extract and grain recipe's. :icon_cheers:

 

[Lord Raja Goomba I]

Oh I've been there, many times. That crisp, clean, bleach flavour is only slightly better than sea water :icon_vomit: .

My first brew was the coopers can that came with my home brew kit, and 1kg of LDME. I have to say, it was a bit ordinary. Best thing I can suggest before getting too complicated is getting one of those bags of finishing hops from your LHBS, and dry hopping it. Once you taste what a little bit of hops will do, you'll dive headlong into the more advanced extract and grain recipe's. :icon_cheers:

+1 - I started off doing Brigalow brews that come with the kit. Tried the better kits (such as the british brown ale from I can't remember whom). Then moved on to soaking grains for my stouts and that made a massive difference. Then onto extract plus hops plus yeast plus grain - this made the single largest jump in quality I experienced and did this for close to 10 years.

Finally moved on to all grain after reading the BIAB guides (according to some, it isn't really BIAB if it isn't the official way, but stuff that). There is a fair jump in quality, though not as big as the quality jump between kit and kilo to extract plus hop plus yeast plus grain. But the big difference is that going AG is more satisfying, you learn and try to learn more about the brewing process again, and most importantly the range of grains gives you so much flexibility that you'll never get with extract.

So the jump in quality wasn't quite as big (Though it was there), but the jump in ability, flexibility and range of beers I can brew is massive.

Goomba

 

[white.grant]

I still have the notebook with my first beer recorded. A coopers draught back in september 89. According to my notes when I opened the first bottle on the 14th of october I was very happy with it. It was carbed, clear and alcoholic.

Fair enough to say that I have learned a lot since then.

cheers

grant

 

[warra48]

My first batch was brewed way back in 1973, and at the time I thought it tasted OK, not unlike Tooheys New of the time.

However, of my more recent renewed homebrewing, I used a Munich Lager kit for the first batch with a Saflager yeast, fermented at 28C in late January!
It wasn't a real success, definitely showing a cooked character. I learnt the lesson of temperature control very quickly.

My second batch was as JSAA clone, also a kit brew, and it was much enjoyed. All my tasting notes on that one were very positive.



Edit: spelling

 

[Swinging Beef]

My first brew in around 1995 was kinda good, and similar to Thooeys New, which is what i wanted at the time.
But from then they went down hill for about a year as I sought to "improve" them.

I took a several year leave from brewing then got back into it with a bun dance straight to full boil extract for a year then full mash for the past two.

Dont be to hard on yourself, see if you can get a more experienced brewer to taste it and give you some tips.

 

[flyinhi]

my first brews were very unrefined k&k brews, made following the can instructions, usually watery, undercarbed, and fairly tastless. I know they got better with a few refinements, coz my brewery back then was my ol mans shed, it didn't take long for the judging panel (read: my dad and his mates) to rip through a good batch on a friday night, the crap ones somehow lasted longer?? :lol:

 

[boriskane]

first brew was:

munich lager kit + 26C fermentation temp + ale yeast= cider