My first all-grain beer

About a month and a half ago, I decided to explore the deep end of beer brewing pool: all-grain brewing. To complicate things further, I decided to do this on a whim, at a friends house, with no-one else around who knew anything about brewing.  It was ugly.  Messes were made, curses were uttered, and more than one frantic phone call was made to an acquaintance who is far more knowledgeable about all-grain than I. But in the end, I prevailed, and had two gallons of  a strawberry wheat beer fermenting happily away.

It looks like beer...

Flash forward to last week, when I finally found the free time to bottle the beer (which had been sitting in secondary for several weeks).  Two gallons fit quite nicely into a dozen bottles and three bombers.

Cut to last night, where I opened the first bottle to give it a try. What is it like? Well...

First off, the title 'Strawberry Wheat Beer' is a bit misleading.  There is no hint of strawberry red in it's coloring.  There is no scent of fresh strawberries in the nose.  And, unless you're looking for it, you're not likely to notice the very, very faint strawberry note in the taste.  However, it is a damn fine wheat beer. It's quite light in body, with a subtle (almost too subtle) hop bite to balance things out.  I have no idea the alcohol content, but would guess about 4.5% based on the recipe. This would have been a great beer to have about two months ago to combat the August heat.

When I next get around to brewing a batch of beer (hopefully soon!) I'll post about the whole complicated process. Until then, cheers!