Yesterday Billy and I bottled out first keggery beer. It’s a basic beer with some added cascade hops, bog myrtle and yarrow using an american ale yeast, and, of course, some hot rocks. We also had a little early morning taste. The bog myrtle was surprisingly overpowering. We had thought that the hops would balance out the bog myrtle a little better, but there’s very little hoppiness. Its got a nice orange colour with no lasting head. It starts with the bitter bog myrtle taste and has a little hoppiness after but the bog myrtle takes over again and leaves a bitter earthy aftertaste. It’s a little sticky and we didn’t discern the yarrow at all. Next time we might tone down the bog myrtle to reduce the herbal bitterness. Two weeks in bottles might affect the taste a little so we’ll see how it ages in two weeks time. This one is for the Inishfood festival so we’ll be serving up small helpings while we demo the fulacht brewing. It comes out at a hefty 5.4% ABV, which is close to what we were aiming for. Our beer is certainly getting somewhere, but we need a little more experimentation to get the balance right and make it a little more appealing to the modern palate. This one is a little ‘challenging’, shall we say…
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