Wednesday, November 9, 2011

First taste - Pale Ale

Finally got to sample my batch of Pale Ale.  Pours nice, bottle carbonation took and a good 1/2 head developed.  Beer is quite cloudy, I am hoping that with some more time this will clear out a bit but I did not use any finings during the brew process.  I may need to add this to future batches or see how a secondary fermentor helps the clarification.  Taste was good, not great.  Good hop flavor but not a lot of malt balance there.  I suspect my grain conversion was not very good which would explain the low starting gravity as well.  I am going to let these sit for a couple more weeks and try another.  In the mean time, I am looking to brew a Belgian Dubbel.  I am sticking with an extract or extract/whole grain mix for now, but I did find instruction for a nice cooler conversion mash tun.  Hopefully I can move to all grain after another batch or so.  Less expensive and opens up more possibilities.  Downside is it will take much more time.

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