As my millions of loyal readers will recall, our latest beer efforts have been a wheat beer. See previous beer watching episodes for this season at here, here, here, and here. I didn’t have a chance to have a tasting of the brew until now. And you know what? It tastes like beer.
Well, sorta. It tastes like kind of bad beer.
I can’t tell you exactly where we went wrong, or even if we did entirely went wrong– maybe I just don’t like the kind of beer we made (though I’ve had wheat beers before). But this particular batch tastes, well, homemade. And the reason this is both surprising and disappointing is that the last batch we made was very good, and the one before that (which Bill HD made himself) was also very good. So I don’t know….
Anyway, I’m looking forward to season 3 of the Beer Watcher. And once I do some emptying at the sink, I’ll have plenty of bottles, too….
I did an interesting taste experiment the other day when I tasted the Hefe for the first time. I had my stepdad and brother at my house, so we did a little experiment. We tasted, in succession, the following beers, with water in between each 2 oz sample:
Our Hefe
Bud Light
Bell’s Oberon
Our IPA
In that lineup, the newly brewed hefeweizen tasted immature, but not “bad”. In fact, I was surprised at how close to Oberon it is. I think the main difference is that Oberon has some finishing hops that give it a bit more character than ours does.
The bud light had even less flavor – it was really interesting to taste these side by side. I would drink our hefe before a bud light any day. The only thing that makes BL interesting at all is the excessive carbonation – it’s like beer-flavored fizzy water.
I think the big thing with our hefeweizen is that it has so little hops, so the flavor at this point is still dominated by the esters (the vaguely banana aroma).
In any case, I am not giving up on it yet.
Here’s an article about esters in Hefeweizen by a guy who I respect (because I used to go the Albany Pump Station now and then, where he is a brewer):
http://www.evansale.com/esters_article.html
I think we have an ester-y beer, which Steve apparently doesn’t care for. The jury is out for me. I’ve had worse craft-brewed beers in pubs, I do believe. (I can think of a particular Belgian Triple that makes me shudder even when I type this…)
The Krouse is a whiner. It isn’t that bad.
Of course you say it isn’t that bad! You’re up posting on my blog at 2:30 in the morning and spelling my name wrong, too!
Actually though, the second one wasn’t as bad as the first one I had. I guess why I’m disappointed is the first beer that Bill made and gave to me and Steve B. was very good, and the beer that was the subject of the first season of “The Beer Watcher” was, IMO, even better. This brew…. well, this beer is a little disappointing to me.
BTW, when do we start season three: Silverback Porter?
The equipment is ready to receive a new brew anytime, boys.