Sampling the Xmas Present

So on Christmas I got what may be the best possible beer-related gift. No, it wasn’t a counter-pressure bottling system or a kegerator. It was a single bottle of beer.

What made it special was that it was brewed by my eldest daughter, who is in Montreal these days. Without my knowing it, she and her friend decided to take up homebrewing, brewing up their first batch in November. That is pretty cool. Even more cool was that they opted to skip right over the whole kit/extract phase and jumped in the deep end. The local homebrew supply store set them up with sufficient milled malt and hops to make a mini-batch of 7 litres. They went through the whole mashing, sparging and boiling process in her kitchen and brewed up what they call “mystery ale”.

It is a mystery ale because they failed to record what kind of malt and hops they were given. Ahh, such are the adventures of the young. We cracked open the bottle on Boxing Day and we both (she hadn’t tried any yet) got our first taste of her inaugural batch.

It poured a medium copper with decent clarity. The head was a bit thin and the sediment was a bit thick – I think due to their decision to forego a secondary – but otherwise it looked good. The aroma had an earthy hoppiness and a touch of malt sweetness. The taste started mildly sweet upfront, with a distinct crystal malt character, and then slid into a lovely hop bitterness which I would describe as grassy and earthy. While they didn’t calculate bitterness or any other statistics – their’s was an artistic approach – there were definitely a good number of IBUs in this beer.

That fact alone is enough to make an old homebrewer smile. My daughter’s first batch of beer and it was no insipid yellow water – she went straight for the bitter. Plus she tells me their next planned batch is a stout. It is enough to make a old man beam with pride!

Another homebrewer in the family. That can only mean more good beer to go around.