The bubbles on my beer have slowed to once every few minutes now, so I decided to use that as an excuse to test it. (Secretly I really just wanted to taste it, but the testing is important too.)
I had to rig something for removing the stopper since I had pushed it too far down inside last time, so I boiled a bobby pin bent up like an anchor (the wall type, not the sea type) and tied it off with dental floss, this allowed me to push the stopper inside the carboy without dropping it down into the beer. Yay!
I siphoned out a little bit of the beer into my testing tube. The aroma was strong, slightly astringent from the greenness of the beer and a bit of hops to it. The color was only slightly darker than I had hoped for, sort of a caramel shade. This was a pleasant surprise since it looks so dark in the carboy. I took the gravity and got 1.020. This means that the beer is currently 6.93% alcohol by volume. I'm only expecting around 75% attenuation so it has about 1-2% left to go.
It's flat of course - lacking carbonation - and it definitely tastes green. There is a bit more bitterness than I had planned for, but that's to be expected with my hopping mistake. There's a hotness to the alcohol too. Both of these improve with aging, so aging will do this beer some good. There is wheat note to it, but not as strong as say a boulevard. There's no off flavors that I could detect at this point, but I don't have the most refined palate. Overall I am very happy so far!
Maybe I'll start the blonde ale this weekend!
No comments:
Post a Comment