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Back in the early/mid 90s my parents took a crack at "saving money" on beer by going to one of those brew-on-the-premises places where you go in, select a "recipe", mix ingredients together, they do all the intermediary stuff, then you come back later to bottle.
I remember my friends and I, slightly underage at the time, sneaking a bunch of those beers one summer and thinking they were utterly horrible (my friends still talk about it sometimes, in fact). Friends of the family apparently agreed with us teenagers; my parents literally couldn't give the stuff away, so after a few attempts they eventually just went back to buying commercial beer.
Now that I brew beer in my own home and have learned a few things about how beer is made, it's got me curious about what might have made those 90s you-brews so dreadful. I can still remember what they tasted like; they were carbed well enough, they looked fine, but the aroma and flavor had this weak, kind of fruit-juice character that I came to associate with homebrew (misguided, I know).
I'm guessing they probably started with big bags of cheap and stale extract juice, added water, and grossly under-pitched some half-dead dry yeast. Fermentation was probably in a big open room with no temperature control, leading to poor attenuation and esters (hence the fruity flavor I so vividly recall). Sound right? Anybody else try one of these outfits?
I remember my friends and I, slightly underage at the time, sneaking a bunch of those beers one summer and thinking they were utterly horrible (my friends still talk about it sometimes, in fact). Friends of the family apparently agreed with us teenagers; my parents literally couldn't give the stuff away, so after a few attempts they eventually just went back to buying commercial beer.
Now that I brew beer in my own home and have learned a few things about how beer is made, it's got me curious about what might have made those 90s you-brews so dreadful. I can still remember what they tasted like; they were carbed well enough, they looked fine, but the aroma and flavor had this weak, kind of fruit-juice character that I came to associate with homebrew (misguided, I know).
I'm guessing they probably started with big bags of cheap and stale extract juice, added water, and grossly under-pitched some half-dead dry yeast. Fermentation was probably in a big open room with no temperature control, leading to poor attenuation and esters (hence the fruity flavor I so vividly recall). Sound right? Anybody else try one of these outfits?