ericbw
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There's nothing on the yeast packets, but there is a specific yeast written out for each recipe in the book. Of course, this varies by recipe.
BBS was my first brew, ever. I wanted to skip extract altogether in the beginning. I did the Chocolate Maple Porter. It's pretty roasty. I boiled off too much wort and had to add almost six cups of water to the fermenter. The porter flavor was incredibly strong, and of the porters I've had, it was most similar to Kona Coffee Porter. Any ideas as to why the porter flavor was so strong?
Recently, I brewed the Honey Grapefruit Ale. So far it has been a disaster. The grapefruit flavor isn't there, but the bitterness is. After two weeks in, I bottled. I sucked up too much yeast at the end of the siphoning, which really seems to have clouded up the beer. I tried one last night, warm, after only 1 week of bottle conditioning - and the result was volcanic. I tried a bit of what was left and it was one of the worst beers I've ever had. At some point I think something went wrong in the process. I'll age the other bottles a bit more and repost what happens.
A friend also brewed their Mexican hot Chocolate Stout. I didn't observe his process so who knows what happened along the way, but it tasted like...nothing. Stout water, maybe.
One constant I've seen with Brooklyn Brew Shop recipes is that almost every one results in overcarbonation. Fridge resting seems to help, though.
There isn't a lot of the grapefruit flavor. It's kind of a subtle hint in the aroma and that's all. I just had one last night that I brewed in the fall. It has very little grapefruit anything, but still the solid bitterness from it.
It might be just warm, flat, under-conditioned beer. Was it sour?
I made a stout recently (not BBS), and it also ended up pretty bland. I have had better luck with a different recipe, but this one was a basic stout. It might get better with age, but I was surprised that it was so bland.