International Homebrew Project - The Beer is Here

After 5 weeks of waiting, yesterday I popped open the first bottle of the American Pale Ale I brewed as part of the International Homebrew Project. For those unaware, you can see the recipe that we chose to make here, but here is a quick rundown, we brewed an American Pale Ale, hopped with Centennial, Amarillo and Cascade, the choice of yeast was left to each participant, in my case I used the American Ale II from Wyeast and followed my usual fermentation and conditioning schedule, 2 weeks of the former and 3 of the latter.

Once the two weeks in the primary were up, my variant had gone from an original gravity of 1.046 to a final gravity of 1.014, giving me an abv of 4.3%. The OG was low for the report I got from Beertools.com for the same set of ingredients, which had predicted an OG of 1.058, but it was within range for the style apparently, so I wasn't unduly concerned. Anyway, enough of the geekery (another cynical thought, home brewers would be better served obsessing about flavours and aromas rather than numbers), and on to the beer itself, which you can see below.

For the sake of ease, I will, as ever, use my version of Cyclops to describe the beer.

• Sight - amber, dark gold edges, tight white head
• Smell - generally citrus, distinct grapefruit
• Taste - sharp bitter up front, mellow sweet background
• Bitter - 3/5
• Sweet - 3/5

This is a nice beer, and one I will be brewing again, though perhaps modified a touch (read more hops and upping the malt), but overall I am very satisfied with my first stab at an American Pale Ale, and enjoyed deciding the style and ingredients of the beer by cyber committee. I know of at least one other person who took part in the project, James over at A Homebrew Log, whose beer is reviewed here. If anyone else took part, let us know and leave a comment with a link to your post about the beer.

There will be an International Homebrew Project 2 later on in the year, with brewing to take place the first weekend of September, so put a date in your brewing diaries!