Homebrew Tasting

Susan mentioned I haven't been posting about my own brews, and I'm not sure why either. So here are a couple samples I've enjoyed lately:

Oatmeal Stout:

I used a standard Mr. Beer Stout extract kit but spruced it up with some chocolate grain and of course oatmeal. I use both Magnum (bittering) and Willamette (aroma) hops in whole leaf variety. It came out quite nice, even only at the two-week mark in the bottle. Very smooth with a thick mouthfeel and subtle chocolate and oatmeal notes. I was rather pleased with this one.

Irish Red:

I used a standard Mr. Beer Red kit as the base, but used quite a bit of Magnum hops to give it a good kick in the butt, which worked. I've also been using Crystal grains (60L in this case) in many of my beers for a while, to supplement the extract. This is a nice strong flavored Red, with plenty of hops up front, and a good bitter finish.

I'll be taking about half a dozen beers with me to Oregon for a bit of sampling with Mr A., so I'll report on those when I return.

C'