American Ale and Guinness Clone
02/03/2008
Well, this weekend I bottled an Amber Ale that I brewed a few weekends ago. This was just a Brewer’s Best kit - the American Ale (except I substituted liquid yeast for the dry yeast that comes in the kit). I tasted some during the bottling, and I have to say, this is a pretty damn good beer! Apart from not being carbonated, the beer already tastes “done”.
Before bottling I wasn’t too thrilled with this beer, just because I kept thinking that I should have done an original recipe instead of just falling back on a kit. After tasting it though, I’m really happy with it. I guess being “lazy” and just brewing a kit is better than not brewing at all!
Also, I racked my Guinness Clone to the secondary fermenter today. Not much to say about it, except I didn’t come close to getting maximum utilization from the yeast. That just means that it’ll be lower than expected alcohol content, and might taste a little sweet - which may actually be a good thing. (Imagine Guinness with just a touch of sweetness to it!)
I forgot to prep a wash for the yeast though, so I wasn’t able to harvest from this batch. I still have two bottles of yeast from the previous batch though, so I have enough to get through a couple more batches. I’ve yet to brew with yeast that I harvested from a previous batch, so we’ll see how it goes.