The 2018 Brew Dudes community brew has progressed nicely since our announcement back in September. Both Mike and I brewed a version of the Brown ale, following the recipe that we posted for the most part with some small changes based on ingredient availability.

The beers were ready for the most part and we tasted them side by side to compare and contrast them. As we have learned in the past, small differences can have big effects on the finished beer.

Watch as we taste these beers and take note of these two examples of the 2018 community brew.

Tasting Notes

Aroma: The guidelines call for a light sweet malt aroma with toffee, nutty, and/or light chocolate notes. My beer had the sweet malt aroma with caramel in the front. Mike’s had strong toast notes with earthy hops mixed in there.

Appearance: The beers should be dark amber to dark reddish brown in color and clear. Our beers were a little hazy but I think we hit the color. Ours were dark amber.

Flavor: Brown ales should have gentle to moderate malt sweetness with light to heavy caramel notes with medium to dry finish. My beer had a nice wallop of caramel. Mike had more toffee and biscuit notes with some caramel flavor in the aftertaste.

Mouthfeel: This type of beer should have medium light to medium a mouthfeel and both our beers had that.

Overall Impression: My brown ale had a big malty punch where Mike’s was crisper and drier on the palate. His toasty flavor was the big note where mine had the caramel focus.

What Did We Learn?

Community brews are time to bring us together but also to show off how small differences can change beers dramatically. As Mike said, these two beers were very easy to distinguish from each other that even a triangle test wouldn’t throw us off.

We’re happy about how they came out and we hope the homebrewers that participated also were pleased with their results.

All the brewers who were looking to swap have been paired up and should be able to ship off their beers in the near future.

The next experiment for us, of course, is to really try to brew the same beer as closely as possible and see if we can replicate each other’s beer.

Until then, BREW ON!