Should it taste like that?!

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[Dubba_Brew]

Sheen makes a good point. When I was doing extract and partial boils, the day before brewing I would try to boil enough water for my top off water. I would cool it and then put it in sanitized 1 gallon jugs and stick them in the fridge. That way I had water for top off that was about as clean as I could get it without buying some good spring water.

Now... this is your first brew, so you're gonna make some mistakes. Don't take them to heart... learn from them. I'm sure that most everyone else that has commented would suggest the same thing that I'm gonna say... try keeping some kind of a brewday journal. This will let you know what you did, that way when you drink the beer and something is off... you might have an easier time troubleshooting. I started doing that after, about, batch 5. It's made a great difference. You can go back and look at little things like temp and water additions and all kinds of things that may have seemed normal when they happened, but strange when you look back on it.

Let this one go for a couple more weeks, bottle and try to enjoy it. If you enjoy brewing and learning (you read How To Brew... twice), you'll just keep at it and you beers will get better.

Prost!

[BrickBrewHaus]

Thanks again for your help. I'm gonna try the same recipe 1) at lower/more controlled fermentation temps and 2) with bottled water to see the difference it makes (hopefully).

[BrickBrewHaus]

An update on this batch...I took another gravity measurement today (two weeks after brew day), mostly an excuse to give it another taste. The beer tastes much better and the aroma is much closer to what I would expect. There were no harsh aftertastes that I had a week ago. It seems patience paid off and I'm gonna leave it in the primary for another week to see if it improves just a little more. I can't wait to bottle and drink my first brew.