Back in May, we put a recipe out there for viewers of our YouTube channel and readers of our blog to brew and exchange with each other. In this post and video, we discuss the two brews that were shared with us and what the whole experience meant.

Best Bitter Homebrew Sharing

So we did get a couple of beers sent to us from two different guys who brewed a Best Bitter. One was pretty close to the recipe we posted. The other one was slightly modified but still in style.

Both had appearances that matched the BJCP guidelines for best bitters.

Aroma for the beers were pretty spot on too. The beers had caramel toasty thing going along with some estery notes from the yeast.

The flavor should have an earthy hop bitterness to it. One of the beers had a great East Kent Goldings presence to it. The other one had a crisp finish that we attributed to the inclusion of flaked maize. Mike applauded the addition but wanted more biscuit malt flavor in the finished beer.

The carbonation and body for both beers were to style as well.

In the end, the beer that followed our recipe closer was more in what we had in mind for the beer. It matched our bias of the style.

What Did We Learn From All Of This?

I think we had two main goals for the community brew. The first thing we wanted to accomplish was to try to connect people who homebrew through one focused experience. I believe we did that.

The second thing we did was get two different best bitters in our hands from two different brewers and taste them side by side along with the guidelines. I think by doing that, we had a chance to learn more about the style and gain knowledge to be better homebrewers.

We have one more community brew post to do. There were a few feedback forms that we sent to us plus we got feedback from judges on our brews. We’ll try to get to that post before the end of the year.

Brew on!