Beer #1 English Brown Ale

First beer was an English Brown Ale. A buddy of mine and I made this from a pretty nice kit. I was happy to find that in addition to the extracts it also contained some specialty grains for steeping. From my minimal amount of research I have deduced that this will give the beer more and better flavor than the extracts alone. We strained this beer after brewing to remove the trub from the wort and planned on a 4-6 day fermentation period. Over the course of the next several days I found that fermentation had stalled due to my furnace blowing a breaker. Once fermentation started we allowed for a seven day fermentation period after which we immediately bottled. One week after bottling we opened our first bottles. The beer had a wonderful depth of flavor, although it had not finished carbonation and the sugar levels were a little high leading to a distinct caramel flavor accompanying the expected smokey flavor. By the time the recommended three weeks had passed of bottling time had passed the I found the beer to have a pronounced hoppiness that complimented the smokey flavor very well. While this beer was not necessarily an outstanding example of what a homebrew can be, it was definitely worth the time and effort, and a very good go for my first attempt. My only real complaint was a slight yeasty flavor which I attributed to no transferring the beer to a secondary fermenter for clarification before bottling.

-Foodstye