First IPA Tasting

I debated when to open the first bottle of my very first home brewed beer. I had intended originally to leave it at least one month, but some expert advice stated that it could be at its peak after as little as 4 weeks. This advice went against my experience when tasting Phil's homebrew (see my blogroll), as it seemed to get better and better up to at least 9 months in some cases, and not being close to its best until it had been in the bottles for 3 or 4 months.

My uneducated theory on these time differences is that it may be the case that after around 4 weeks, some of the strongest flavours like the hops and bitterness begin to fade slowly. However, other flavours grow as the beer matures. Therefore as time goes by you get a deeper, more blended and more well rounded beer, which to my personal pallet, is much more favourable.

Getting back to the point, I decided that as this is my first beer, I need to learn as much as possible about the phases the beer goes through, so opening a few of my 42 beers before the beer is at its best will be worth it. So, on Friday, 10 days after the beer had been bottled, I opened my first one.



I opened the very last bottle I bottled (one with a gold cap if you read the bottling post here). This would therefore have had a number of the lumps of yeast in. There was also the chance that it had extra priming sugar in, given I had intended to leave the beer with the priming sugar mixed in for around 30 minutes, but it had well over an hour as I cleaned all the bottles.

There was a pleasant fizzing sound as I popped off the cap. I poured it carefully and no head really appeared until I straightened the glass to pour the final third in, but even then it was just a very short-lived co2 head and was gone in 30 seconds. There were lots of bubbles rising in the beer to start with. As the picture shows, the beer was very dark, and not very clear at all. The aroma was pleasant, though very mild. I would say it was a slightly fruity smell.

When I finally tasted the beer, I was rather disappointed. It had very little flavour at all - barely anything to have an opinion on. It was pleasantly fizzy, but perhaps already slightly more fizzy than I would want an ale like this to be. There was a very slight after taste to the beer. It wasn't very noticeable, but I might describe it as a slightly yeasty taste. The beer was also quite sweet. This made it hard to drink.

My overall feeling currently is disappointment, but I still have some hope for this beer. This was after all the last beer bottled, so the the yeasty taste, the fizz and the sweetness could all be explained by this. The desired flavour I hope will come with time, as will clarity. I intend to leave it a couple of weeks before opening another one, which will be one of the first I bottled.