So, as one of my baby-steps toward opening a gluten-free brewpub here in SF, I had the opportunity to meet informally with a friend of my girlfriend's family who is a potential future investor. She basically wanted to taste my three best beers and just talk a bit about my background, my plans, and what I'm going to do in the next few years to make myself and my business plan more attractive to investors. I gave her the caveat that none of my beers are yet satisfactory, but that I think they are moving in the right direction, but anyway I wanted to do a critical tasting of everything I've got bottled before I met with her to pick out the three best. So my girlfriend and I sat down the other night and cracked 10 different beers, and tasted them back-to-back (cleansing our palates in between, of course).
Without going into too much detail, I came to the conclusion that extract is not working for me. The best beers were the ones with the most grains, by a wide margin, but even these were a long way from where I wanted them to be. The interesting thing was how similar all the beers tasted--and you guys know that I throw in all kinds of weird stuff to try to liven them up! But they all had too much sweetness, and lacked depth. I think the candi syrups and honey leave too much residual sweetness that is just not "beery" enough, and the sorghum and rice extracts are just totally flat in terms of flavor. Not bad, but not impressive. And indeed, this potential future investor was not terribly impressed. I ended up choosing the No-Nonsense Stout, Purple Hefereisen, and Grapefruit IPA, but of those the stout was the only one she wanted more than a taste of.
So, from here on out, I'm going to be exploring the use of enzymes to do partial mashes, and try to get at least half the fermentables out of grains. If this yields good results, I'm gonna get myself a mash tun and try some all-grain batches. But I've had it with extract-only, and I'm going to tone down the candi syrup and honey additions quite a lot. In fact, I may leave the honey out all together.
Without going into too much detail, I came to the conclusion that extract is not working for me. The best beers were the ones with the most grains, by a wide margin, but even these were a long way from where I wanted them to be. The interesting thing was how similar all the beers tasted--and you guys know that I throw in all kinds of weird stuff to try to liven them up! But they all had too much sweetness, and lacked depth. I think the candi syrups and honey leave too much residual sweetness that is just not "beery" enough, and the sorghum and rice extracts are just totally flat in terms of flavor. Not bad, but not impressive. And indeed, this potential future investor was not terribly impressed. I ended up choosing the No-Nonsense Stout, Purple Hefereisen, and Grapefruit IPA, but of those the stout was the only one she wanted more than a taste of.
So, from here on out, I'm going to be exploring the use of enzymes to do partial mashes, and try to get at least half the fermentables out of grains. If this yields good results, I'm gonna get myself a mash tun and try some all-grain batches. But I've had it with extract-only, and I'm going to tone down the candi syrup and honey additions quite a lot. In fact, I may leave the honey out all together.