A taste of Sierra
I imagine if you’re like me, your Christmas/New Year’s break has provided ample opportunity to over-indulge in great beer as well as some not-so-great beer; as provided by uncles and aunties that you only ever see once a year, and very little time hanging around your computer reading or posting blogs.
We were fortunate enough to have some added excitement to our New Year with our first all-grain home brew coming to fruition on New Year’s Eve.
The initial tasting on bottling day had given us reasonably high hopes of turning out a good beer and I was absolutely fizzing as I popped the top off the Sierra Endeva. The beer however, wasn’t fizzing quite as much. My first thoughts were that it probably could have benefited from a little longer conditioning or more sugar.
The colour was a nice golden amber with a bit of haze (which has since cleared up somewhat).
On the nose, I picked up some hints of passionfruit as well as some other not-so-pleasant smell which I am yet to identify. If my memory serves me at all from our malt extract batches long ago, I would have to say it’s an aroma that comes from the yeast and our lack of patience may have got the better of us.
On tasting, the passionfruit was still apparent and was backed up by some bitter notes.
We all agreed we were pretty happy with our first all grain brewing attempt. It turned out to be much more drinkable than our previous extract attempts and we are aware of the places where we went wrong in the brewing process.
Our next batches will be better streamlined with improvements to the brew kit and an increased awareness when brewing, so I’m looking forward to that.
P.S. Over the break we managed to put down two more brews, will post on those soon
2 comments to “A taste of Sierra”
Pants - 10 Jan, 2012
How much NZD do I have to part with for one bottle from every batch from this batch until I arrive in Oct 23ish……I will be thirsty on arrival!
BillofBeer - 11 Jan, 2012
I’ll see what we can do, Pants