Quote:
Originally Posted by Lzen
Anyone have any good supplier recommendations (looking for recipe kits, mainly)? If not, I'm gonna try out Midwest Supplies (thanks 1moreTRich). I was using Brewgadgets but wanted to find something perhaps a little cheaper.
I have now brewed 3 batches. The first one was a brown ale and it turned out pretty well. Most people that tried it enjoyed it. The one person who said he didn't was a regular Bud Select drinker so I take that opinion with a grain of salt.
The 2nd batch was a porter. I don't know if I messed up during the process somewhere, put some in the fridge too early, or its simply not a great tasting beer. It tasted a bit sweet. I will try it again now that it has had a few weeks fermentation time and see if it has gotten any better.
The most recent one is a pale ale. This turned out well, too. While its not as great a pale as Blvd or Sierra Nevada, it is pretty good and I will definitely be enjoying drinking those. Again, I tried it after about a week to a week and a half of bottling. I know it will get better with a little more aging so I'm happy with the way it turned out. I even loved smelling those extra hops when I was brewing this one.  |
For any of my extra supplies (my brew club does bulk grain and hop buys) I almost exclusively use
http://www.brewmasterswarehouse.com/. Their prices are comparable and they have great customer service. Their brewbuilder is awesome and you can search through other brewer's recipes for ideas. You get a 10% discount when you use the brewbuilder to buy ingredients with code BBBYO.
As for the porter, usually when it turns out on the sweet side, it got racked before the yeast were done or you had a stuck fermentation. How long did you let it sit in the primary? Did you take a gravity reading when you bottled it?
Just a tip, if you love the hoppy aroma of pales and ipa, try dry hopping (add some hops in the carboy around 3-7 days before you rack it to bottles). It gives it such an extra dimension. I don't make a pale or IPA without dry hopping.