El Gato Negro #1

I would say our first foray into homebrewing was a success and a bit of fun as well. Andy's girlfriend ( he is pictured to the left) bought him a brew kit for X-Mas and he called me (to the right, obv) in to lend a hand. Initially I was worried that we hadn't minded the sterilization of our equipment enough, but that only made a minor change to the finished beer. We plan on being more experimental with future batches but the kit really was a great way to begin. We already ordered an ESB kit and will be hitting up the homebrew store by my apartment for some specialty ingredients sometime soon.

And here it is: El Gato Negro #1. Named after Andy's cat Milo that apparently thinks hops are some form of catnip. A starter kit beer that I believe was just labeled as 'ale' this brew turned out decent for a first attempt. We ended up with a fairly malty beer because the instructions we went off asked for the hop bags to be removed a bit earlier than other step by steps I have found, but thats fine. There was a tiny bit of sourness because of some wild yeast running rampant in the bucket, but not overwhelming at all. A good learning experience and a nice way to spend a few Sunday afternoons, especially when you get to sit down and drink nine of them!

Next time we plan on paying more heed to sterilization, or at least having a better method for it and getting a quality siphon so less beer is wasted. Nothing as elaborate as what Homebrewing Adventures or Fermentedly Challenged have going on in their blogs, but a fine beginning nonetheless.