So I've got a wherry microbrewery kit on the go as my first ever attempt at making delicious booze.. It's been in the FV for about a week now. I'm getting ready to keg so I decided to have a wee snifter from the sample jar to see how its getting along.. however, its not quite the tasty brew I was expecting. It seems very bitter and alcoholic, with no maltiness or hoppiness coming through at all, it actually tastes like nasty wilkos homebrew kits of old, but from reading around this is supposed to be a top quality kit rivalling commercial ales.. so I'm a little confused. Is it normal for the brew to taste harsh at this point..? I've read a lot of posts on here from people claiming their samples were lovely.. have I broken it?
Some details of my process:
Made up the wort as per instructions.. added the extract to boiled water and topped up with cold. In one of my signature fits of stupidity, I filled up to 25l instead of 23, so in an attempt to counteract this and avoid weak girly beer I added some glucose powder.. probably about 400g (could this be the culprit? I have no real idea what I'm doing, but I tend to learn by jumping in with both feet and regretting my mistakes later). My OG was around 1.040 and the temperature at this point was 28c.
I aerated the wort with my big spoon/paddle thing for a few mins until it looked satisfyingly bubbly, then pitched a packet of Danstar Windsor directly onto the surface (I used this rather than the included yeast because I like to mess with things and the description included seductive words like "fruity").
I moved the FV into the back bedroom to ferment.. it's pretty baltic in there at this time of year so I fitted a brewbelt on a timeclock to come on 15mins in every hour, wrapped it in a few towels and left it to get busy. After about 24-30 hours, the smell was glorious, there was a large foamy head in my pot and the temperature was holding steady at about 19c. At this point I congratulated myself on my mastery of the art of brewing and left the room in a heady state of chuffed - this may have been slightly pre-emptive.
After 3 days I cracked the lid to check progress again and was greeted with a beguiling smell of what can only be described as 'eggy trumps'. My research has suggested that weird smells are normal and can be ignored, so thats exactly what I did. However, I was surprised to see the hydrometer reading of 1.012 after only 3 days. Somewhat puzzled, I wrapped the thing back up and left it until today.
Right now the unpleasant smell has subsided and my hydrometer is still reading 1.012, but the taste is as described - a bit rubbish. I'm not sure what I've done wrong but clearly I've managed to imprint my idiocy onto it somehow..
any suggestions please? Thanks
