This was our first brew based on a Munich Lager craft beer(!) kit (I will dig out the full recipe). The NOB No.1 kicked off on June 24th, was fermented for a week and then bottled, so it has been bottle conditioning for three weeks.

The beer itself is a deep amber with light carbonation and a decent white head, it has a quite powerful aroma of bread, yeast and hops.

NOB is certainly refreshing and not lacking in body and has a decent whack of good beery taste with some hoppy bitterness toward the finish. It stands up as a fuller hoppy beer which when the flavours settle down in a couple of months ought to be a decent first brew. As the original idea of hops in beer was to help preserve it, I would be keen to try one of these in a year or twos time and see what the taste is.

We didnt measure the gravity so cannot say exactly what the abv is, however going on rough association I would guess its a 4.5-5%’er with ease.

Nick has suggested a more science based approach (him being a uber sciencist type) based on drinking 5 bottles of a set ABV beer and then the next night drinking 5 bottles of NOB and comparing inebriatedness and then doing something involving rulers and graphs. Probably propelling pencils as well.

Rather than faff about further we kicked off the above two brews last weekend. Yes you saw correctly, we have found another fermenter!  In the first one is a winter ale based around nut brown ale, a boiled whack of caramalt, fuggles and goldings hops and some Nick n Rob magic. The second is the corona style clone (lager kit, saaz hops and some carapils malt) , the aim being to brew a lighter lager in the mexican style, this is a dry (or should that be wet?) run to get the base right so in the future we can add some citrus flavours.

Considering it is ‘winter’ here in Brisvegas and it still only gets as low as 18-20C in the day the winter ale might require the air con on full blast. Potentially there are a few people from the UK heading over for New Years so it could be converted to a Xmas Ale, but then it is mid summer so 35C and up. Hmm.