As I stated in my first post on this I have been homebrewing for 6 months now and in that timeframe I have brewed 7 times. All of the brews were extract recipes well except for the Mead. I guess that was All- Grain LOL! I’ll list them in chronological order along with a few notes about the brew
1)American IPA – (Affectionately known a Bilgewater Brew) This was a More Beer kit with Magnum hops and used Safale US-05 yeast. To put it bluntly this was my first brew. Although I had helped my dad brew when I was kid, I had no idea what I was doing. Somehow I ended up with only 4 gallons of this “beer”. It came out Very Dark and almost thick enough to be used on pancakes. I will say, however, that it is getting better with age.
2)American Light – This was a Brewer’s Best kit. Most of my friends are light beer drinkers, particularly Miller Lite. One look at the Bilgewater and they wouldn’t even touch it so I decided to brew something they would actually drink. And Drink it they did. This brew flew out of my fridge.
3)Centennial Blonde - (Affectionately known as Apple Bottomed Blonde) I was already tired of bottling so I decided to keg a brew for drunken weekend vacation with friends. Since it was the middle of summer and I was interested in trying to add fruit into the secondary, I brewed a Centennial Blonde that I got off of a homebrew forum and added the Apples. It was Delicious! And we kicked that keg QUICKLY!
4)Honey Pilsner – An attempt to create my own recipe and to make another brew like the American light but with a bit of a summer/honey flavor. I switched out the Rice Syrup Solids of the American Light with Honey Malt. Yeah Something went wrong with this brew. I bottled this one but it was way under carbonated. Also a lot of Banana flavors came out in this brew. I later realized that I also didn’t use the same yeast as the American Light. I will probably brew this one again but use the first yeast and keep a closer eye on the fermentation temp.
5)Belgian Wit - I finally decided I was going to brew a beer for myself. As a big fan of Blue Moon I decided to do a clone brew. The out come was okay. There are a few things I will tweak the next time I brew it. The coriander was very potent and I used just bitter orange peel. Next time I will reduce the coriander and use half bitter and half sweet orange peel.
6)Meads! – My homebrew club did a group Mead Brew Day. In it I mixed up 3 gallons of mead. This week I’m going to break that up into 3 one gallon secondaries and add chili peppers to one and pineapple to another. The third will be plain mead.
7)Cherry Wheat – With fall the way I decided to start making some slightly darker beers. I have had one good Sam Adam’s Cherry Wheat (and 3 bad ones) so I decided to try and make my own version of this beer. I also changed the way I ferment my beers this time. More on this later.
So that’s what I have so far. Not a bad way to start as I’m learning about new beers and slowly breaking away from what I’m used to drinking with my friends. There will definitely be more brews in the future and soon I’ll be moving on to All-Grain brewing once I get all of my gear together.