Homebrew #1, Mr. Bock

September 13, 2011

Overview

My first foray into homebrewing. Mr. Bock is a fairly dark bock beer that packs a punch.

Time Invested: 5 weeks (mostly waiting)
Cost: $40
Yield: 5 gallons / 18 liters
Features: Dark, malty goodness

Gallery

Details

At the beginning of last summer my best friend and roommate, Nate, suggested that we start brewing our own beer. Homebrewing is a pretty easy hobby to get into, and for beer lovers like us it's a great way to enjoy premium beers at a fraction of the price. For now we're brewing with malt extract kits, meaning the sugars have been extracted from the grains for us and concentrated into a syrup. Soon we'll buy more equipment and start boiling grain ourselves.

Our first homebrew was made from a "Generic Bock" kit that Nate bought from a homebrew supply shop in Ft. Worth, TX. We chose to name the beer "Mr. Bock" in honor of our high school band director Mr. Bach. I threw together a beer label using Mr. Bach's Facebook profile picture. Mr. Bock was our first homebrew, so we followed the instructions to a tee. Almost. The recipe, like all extract recipes, called for a total of five gallons of water. Trusting that the line at the top of our standard, five-gallon fermentation bucket was a five-gallon line, we filled the bucket with distilled water to the line. It turns out that line marks five and a half gallons. There is no line marking five gallons.

The Verdict

On September 13, 2011, after bottle conditioning the beer for nearly a month, we finally got to taste our first homebrew. Our expectations were low since we used too much water from the get-go, but Mr. Bock turned out delicious! Mr. Bock is on the dark side in terms of color and flavor resembling a porter, though his alcohol content is a disappointingly low ~4.2%. Dark roasted chocolate malt gives the beer a rich flavor with a distinct nutty aftertaste. The beer's mouthfeel is somewhat lighter than you'd expect just looking at it (probably because there's too much water), and there's a bit of a bite to it. Both the flavor and mouthfeel should mellow out over the next few months.

Update: The hydrometer we used to estimate the alcohol content of our first few homebrews wasn't very accurate. Using a new hydrometer for later brews and comparing its readings to readings to our old one, we've determined that the old hydrometer gives alcohol estimates that are 1-2% low. This means that Mr. Bock's actual alcohol content should be in the range of 5-6%. More, uhh, testing of Mr. Bock corroborates the new estimate. It's not a weak beer.

License: CC BY-SA 4.0 Deed - You may copy, adapt, and use this work for any purpose, even commercial, but only if derivative works are distributed under the same license.

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