Hi all,
I wasn't positive where to post this, so I hope right here is alright.
I started brewing extract beer kits from Mr. Beer early last year. I believe I brewed a total of 9 of them. I picked out kits for different beer styles, stouts, ipas, ambers, porters, reds, and a weird one that used mountain dew as the base instead of water. Aside from the IPA and the MTN dew beer, they all taste nearly identical. And not really in a good way. They are drinkable, but nothing that I'd ever want to share with anyone and have pride on my chest. So I did a bunch of reading and learning, and felt like maybe it was because I was using the prehopped extract from Mr. Beer.
So I went to a local homebrew store, bought an oatmeal stout extract kit and went about making it. I worked extra hard and made sure everything was sanitized as thoroughly as I could. I converted my garage fridge into a ferm chamber and managed to hold the fermenation period at 68 degress, plus or minus 2. Spent 3 weeks fermenting, final gravity had stopped changing so I went ahead and bottled. I tried a bottle at 2 weeks, and it there was very little enjoyable about it. Had a very slight oatmeal flavor to it, which I was happy about, but aside from that, the beer wasn't very good. Here I am at 4 weeks conditioning time, tried another last night, and it still tastes the same. Just very under average. But my biggest issue I see here, is that this stout I just made, tastes almost the same as all the other MR Beer recipes I had made when I started. I can't hardly tell any difference between this stout and the amber or irish red that I had made.
I would love some feedback on what I'm doing wrong, because I'm really starting to feel defeated with this. I love the process of brewing so much, and I want to continue it. But I also want to share it, but if I can't make anything acceptable tasting, then I'm just at a loss.