How Did Your First Brew Taste?

[DU99]

kit instructions aren't actually meant to provide decent beer

look at the coopers/baccus and barley temps for lagers..around 20..and we have learnt that lager you do at colder temp..

 

[Sydneybrewer]

as bad as my first beer was me and my mates still drank them all, you couldnt really taste anything after a couple anyway the alc was so high around 8% i believe going through some calculations... we just thought it was good because it got you drunk after a few of them, although one of those mates has vowed never to try homebrew again after one big night, and a big next day vomiting from sun up to sun down.

 

[marksy]

My first one was alright. Think Dad and myself tried to make a Draft of some sort. What ever it was it was the start of my never ending goal to make the perfect beer I can and Im still trying 7 years later

 

[Lobby Lobster]

Later at uni i started brewing again. Me and my mates were too lazy to clean bottles so we used to drink it straight out of the fermenter.

Ha ha.

Mine was a Wander kit back in the early 90's.

Pretty ordinary but we were doing everything wrong. White sugar, stirring with a wooden spoon...

Apparently we gave some to a mate at a party and he put them aside. A year or so later he pulled them out and reckons they were the best beer ever. So the story goes...

 

[.DJ.]

How did it taste? No idea

How did I THINK it tasted? Like Crown Lager... I was stoked! I shudder at the thought now!

 

[Lecterfan]

Scenario-
Your first brew was a coopers lager + white sugar @ 28deg.
You taste it and think it tastes pretty good.
It must be good because it comes from coopers and you follow the instructions to a tee.
You continue making it the same way for the next 20 years because it tastes just great.
Is you beer actually good??

:icon_offtopic: I won't start (because I find it hard to stop)...but that is an awesome philosophical question. A critique on the subjective nature of this little hobby/way of life we have. Post-modern death of the author styled brewing.

I'm done, please ignore me.

 

[Bubba]

I remember it well.
A mate and me got a kit from the supermarket and thought the golden rulkes back then were...

*The cheaper the brew, the more proud we were, hence the cheapest ingredients such as 1k home brand table sugar
*Ferment as quickly as possible, and as hot as possible
*Temp control meant to keep it over 25deg or your yeast will fall to sleep, so make it hotter!
*Don't deviate from the recipe, apart from adding more table sugar to get a higher alc%
*Dont add anything else, keep it simple
*If the can said 5 days to ferment, then don't leave it in the fermenter a minute longer...in fact maybe 4 days will be better!
*Keep all tallies in the garden shed where snails, slugs, dust, spiders etc can live in them till they are ready to be filled.
*Sterilising means the same as cleaning doesnt it.

Hence we had a fermenter of home brand gooop, 1-2k of home brand white sugar, kit yeast in the fermenter in the shed at 25-plus 35degree heat, fermented for 4-5 days max, bottled as quickly as possible and consumtion commencing in as little as 1 week in bottles that had been questionably cleaned.

Many bottle bombs, opening up a tallie that gushed out to meet you, finding a bug stuck to the inside of your bottle, and basically beer that tasted like cats piss that got you absolutely munted...man were we happy!

Needless to ay things are very different now, and after a 10 year break from my first 5 uears brewing, the last 18months has been a real eye opener in terms of how easilly you can make a big difference to a simple brew!

 

[jyo]

My first beer was in January of 2002. It was a BeerMakers Lager with 1.25kg dextrose. Fermented at 27 plus degrees because my uncle told me you have to keep it really warm. I used to actually use a heater belt overnight in Summer if the ambient temps dropped below 20 :lol:

Thinking back, I remember it tasted a bit like Carlton Cold (shudder, cringe), which I used to buy shitloads of at the time, but with hot alcohol flavours...and funked up yeast. In my brewing notes it says "Tastes ok". :blink:

 

[Online Brewing Supplies]

My first beer was in January of 2002. It was a BeerMakers Lager with 1.25kg dextrose. Fermented at 27 plus degrees because my uncle told me you have to keep it really warm. I used to actually use a heater belt overnight in Summer if the ambient temps dropped below 20 :lol:

Thinking back, I remember it tasted a bit like Carlton Cold (shudder, cringe), which I used to buy shitloads of at the time, but with hot alcohol flavours...and funked up yeast. In my brewing notes it says "Tastes ok". :blink:

Yummy :icon_vomit:
GB

 

[jyo]

Yummy :icon_vomit:
GB

I know. It's no wonder homebrew has such a bad reputation. I would offer it to friends and wonder why their faces would contort

 

[bruce86]

hahahaah i have just layed the first one down a thomas coopers larger from brewers kit at 24-26 deg. guess i can right it off already lol

 

[jbowers]

Pretty bad. Honestly, it took a fair few brews before I produced something that I was even mildly happy with. Brewing fresh wort kits was the best decision I ever made - such an improvement over extract.

Got my first AG brew mashing now. Let's hope I'm not back to square one flavour-wise....

 

[mr_tyreman]

Dr Smurtos Golden ale

First ever brew

All grain recipe

poured out in the garden

.....Convinced i could do better i stuck to brewing, and couldn't be happier

 

[mckenry]

My first beer was a Wander Draught. Was a bit scared hammering on the lids, so the entire batch was flat. Plus all the terrible advise from my next door neighbour made my first few batches pretty ordinary.

 

[Dribs]

hahahaah i have just layed the first one down a thomas coopers larger from brewers kit at 24-26 deg. guess i can right it off already lol

If you used the kit yeast, expect a sour apple twang taste. If you're a student/unemployed it is still drinkable.

My first one being the lager that came with the kit tasted like equal parts apple juice, Tooheys New and camel piss. This was due to the temp being around 26.

 

[Dave70]

Like a Coopers sparkling ale kit fermented at 26 deg with an extra 2kg of brown sugar to help it along.
Bottled the nanosecond the airlock stopped bubbling. Consumed after about a week.

The beer taste was incidental. All I can recall is choking on pieces of insufficiently chewed BBQ fare then spasmodically dry retching bile as I lurched foward with my hands on my knees.

Twas many a year before I returned to homebrewing.

 

[Mayor of Mildura]

Mine was the coopers lager from the kit. mmmm tasted like apple cider.

 

[Steve@PMF82]

Coopers heritage lager with dex and kit yeast fermented anywhere between 22 and 25.
I remember at the time thinking it was ok for a first shot.
I knew nothing about off flavors, but twangy apples was about the only flavor it had.

 

[ekul]

My first brews were great, i was 15. I couldn't buy alcohol from the bottlo, but i could buy sugar and coopers cans. The best brews were the apple cider ones because they were meant to taste like apples.

Once i could buy booze i didn't start again till i was a student. We had a fermenter sitting inthe front room. We bottled some of it, but mainly it was drunk straight out of the fermenter after all the goon had run out. Again, didn't taste great but it did the job. Stopped doing that as soon as i could afford goon.

Started again when i was living with my girlfriend at the time in this litttle hippy house where we grew all our own vegetables. Tried everything in that stupid book they sell at woolies with the homebrew kits, but still didn't make a decent beer. Best beer i mad was when my aquarium heater broke and beer fermented at ambient (17-18C). I attributed the better taste to the brigalow hop tablet i'd added and not the fact that every other brew i'd fermented had been at 25C. In that house i never made a drinkable beer again so gave up.

A few years later i moved to bundaberg and started brewing because i was going to teach my sister (she had just started uni.) While doing research I found this website and discovered a few things.

A. Brewing at 25+C is a bad choice
B. Washing the fermenter with hot tap water does not kill bugs.
C. Homebrew can actually taste nice

Anyway since discovering this website i haven't stopped. And i don't think i will ever stop brewing unless i stop drinking beer.

That first beer i made after discovering this website was a can of coopers australian pale ale, a kilo of sugar and the kit yeast. Turned out OK. It was bettein the top 3 homebrews i'd ever tasted and the best i'd ever made. Wasn't so good that i stopped buying beer, but it made me think it was possible. Nowadays the only time i buy a beer is to steal coopers yeast, to try a style of beer i want to make or when i'm at the pub.

Anyway, to any nembie that thinks their beer is tasting not too good, keep going. Once you'll crack it you'll never WANT to buy beer again.

Mine was the coopers lager from the kit. mmmm tasted like apple cider.

 

[lagers44]

I can't even remember what my first kit tasted like, it was 29 years ago and because I was only 17 my dad wouldn't let me drink it so I spent that first year brewing for him, I enjoyed the process to much to care. I have to say though that I do remember the first coopers kits they were 15 or 20L goon bags in a cardboard box, pour into fermenter top up with water & add yeast ( the precursor to the FWK ).
A few years later they went to the tin of goo.