While Mikey has been quite good with his updates lately, especially with his ongoing Journey to Home Brew story, I have been quite slack. We hadn’t done a proper brew in a couple weeks (I did bottle the Friedlieb Porter last weekend though), and I’ve just been generally busy/worn out.
Anyway, I got through all of that and had a weekend of home brew! Not only was a hopped cider AND a stout made, but we also managed to bottle some brown ale, and the remainder of the lager, plus we tried four brews that are finally ready for drinking. Mikey will be writing up the stout brew and reviewing two of the beers, I’ll write up the cider and reviewing the other two.
So, rather than one huge update with all of this, I’ll be trickling the updates out, starting with the review of the Thomas Coopers Heritage Lager here.
Mikey and I both got the same starter kit that came with the same can of Thomas Coopers Heritage Lager. We made my can first and followed the directions to simply add a kilogram of dextrose to the wort. While the beer turned out fairly OK, it wasn’t the most amazing thing either of us ever had. So since Mikey had the same kit, we decided to try it with some malt rather than dextrose.
All in all, the addition of the malt made for a much better, more well rounded beer.
The beer was a fairly standard lager: there was nothing that stood out or was of any amazing interest. The body was quite good though, there was a nice finish, and quite a lot of fragrance.
On the nose, there was a ton of fruit and a bit of sweetness. This fruit continued on the first impression of the taste. It was almost a passion fruit taste, but without the typical sourness associated with passion fruit. With this was also the distinct taste of melon.
The beer had very little bitterness to it. In my opinion, the addition of some bitterness would have been beneficial. While the fruit was a lot of fun and made the beer light and easy to drink, that’s all there was to it. With the addition of some bitterness, the dominant fruit flavours would hopefully have been countered, adding a little complexity to the beer.
On that note, the beer tapered off quite quickly after that.
Overall, the beer was simple, but very easily drinkable. A lager can be difficult to rave about or go to deeply into. They generally lack complexity and this beer was no exception. I’ll happily continue to drink it though!
-Chas
We make home brew 