re: Homebrewing - Weekend Recap

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The taste is pretty harsh. The malt flavor is very faint. I think the total grain bill was 10.75 lbs. The taste is pretty dry. My OG was 1.054 (recipe called for 1.058) and my FG was 1.008 (recipe called for 1.012). So i have a dry taste, little malt character, and a hop punch, that tastes very blunt and harsh. Not like it is to hoppy, but i guess sharp would be a good word to describe it.

I'm confident there is no infection or anything. I think maybe my mash efficiency (which came out to 70% if i did it right) might have been the culprit.

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The 1008 FG is what would make it taste dry rather than your 70% efficiency, which is really good for your first go at it. If the beer was supposed to be 1058 and you got 1054 I would call that a success.

There are a multitude of reasons why it would lack malt character. Maybe mash temp was low so you lack some unfermentable sugars, the malt bill is not setup for a malt backbone (looking at the website it says only a 1/2 lb of specialty grains, so that isn't much to hide behind flavor wise), fermentation temp was high which would lead to some odd yeast flavors. All of those are just speculative ideas though.

You will figure it out. All of us have made beers we aren't happy with.