Friday, January 25, 2008

You're a blockhead Charlie Brown!

Well, I haven't posted here in a while and it's because the first brew didn't turn out all that well. It seems that I may have done a few things wrong, usually no big deal. But, one of the mistakes proved fatal for poor old Charlie Brown and 1.5 gallons of him has gone down the drain (I'm saving the other bottles just in case he decides to bottle condition himself back from the dead).

So, what whent wrong? Here's the short list:
Put my last addition of hops in with 20 minutes left in the boil instead of 1 minute.
Poured the junk (trub) from the bottom of the boil kettle into my carboy.
Didn't let the beer sit on the yeast long enough (only 11 days).
And last, but certainly not least, I topped off the carboy with unboiled well water - AKA "The Death Blow". It seems that well water isn't exactly clean of contaminates like it's well chlorinated cousin; "City Water".

So, after all that work and all that waitin:
It looked like beer.
It smelled like beer.
The first sip almost tasted like beer, but like it had been mixed with aspirin, lots of aspirin. Yuk!

Live and learn. I'm on to my second batch this Sunday, a Hefewiezen. It won't have any cute names, I'll do everything step-by-step, and I WON'T TOP OFF THE CARBOY WITH TAP WATER! ;-)

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