Beer Forum

Brewed my first batch from a kit (extract + grain in bag) a week ago Sunday. It sat for three days with no activity (I pitched from a starter and must have somehow killed my yeast making the starter). I added another dose of WLP002, and the airlock was bubbling away the next day. Today I took a gravity reading, and it went from OG of 1.049 to 1.014, which is better than expected attenuation for that yeast. So after some initial trouble, the fermentation seems to have gone OK.

After checking gravity, I emptied the wine thief into a glass to taste the beer, and there really aren't any off flavors, which is nice. But there really isn't a whole lot of flavor at all. It's not Bud Light thin by any means, but there's just not much to it, especially with regard to hop flavor. Granted it's a low gravity beer, but at the moment there is zero hop aroma, minimal hop flavor, and I find it a bit boring.

Should I add some dry hops to the fermenter to give it a little more flavor?

when you carb it up the carbonation will cause the flavor and aroma to come out. Flat beers tend to taste flat.

What style was it? Flat beer does come across low in hop aroma and flavor, and depending on your style it may not be one that normally has that high of a hop character?

spiderwrangler wrote:What style was it?

ESB - ended up with 28 IBU, which is a little low for the style to begin with.

ESB's tend to be fairly restrained in hop aroma and flavor (which isn't reflected in IBUs, they are different compounds). That being said, if dry hopping to up the aroma is going to make the beer you want to drink, go for it.

spiderwrangler hits the nail on the head... you may be accustomed to "American" (read: high) hop additions, but there are styles that just don't follow that path.

Thanks for the advice--thought I'd report on what's happened since I put it in the keg. But first a little context:

On brewday, one of my friends came over to help. He had invited me over to watch him brew, and to thank him for his help, my wife (an accomplished baker) turned some of his spent grain into sourdough bread from her starter. I'm sure you can see where this is going. We baked some bread and gave him a loaf and snacked on another loaf while we were brewing.

Instead of an ESB, I ended up with a sour that tastes quite a bit like my wife's sourdough. Go figure. It would do poorly if judged as an ESB, but if judged as a lambic, I don't think it would do too bad. So I'm going to bottle some up and save it for that purpose. The rest I'll drink.

Brewday #2 was Sunday. I brewed a Torpedo IPA clone using brew in a bag. Got enough efficiency from the bag (77%) to overshoot my OG by a couple points. It's in the fermenter now and bubbling away...