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After 3+ years and 11 batches of home brew, it finally happened. I brewed a beer that:
1. Turned out like I planned.
2. Can be consumed in 12 oz quantities without being dumped down the drain.

It’s a big moment.

When presented at guys night (where the honest table was born), the 2019 Saison was given the feedback of “This has more flavor than I expected it to” -- in a world of “this is really flabby and then smacks you in the face with an unpleasant bitterness” and “this is supposed to be an ipa?” and who can forget “huh, I was just expecting it to be different”, more flavor than expected feels pretty great. It could be the result of diminished expectations, but who cares.

So what went right with this batch that hadn’t gone right before? The general theme was that I’ve gained enough comfort with the brewing process that sticking to times & temperatures, being patient, and calmly problem solving when things don’t go as expected feels more natural. Things don’t go off the rails and snowball quite as easily.

All that said, what simple things went right that I’ve fucked up before?
* My sparging temperature held constant for 60 minutes.
* The mash tun didn’t clog during the sparge.
* After batch sparging I had the correct quantity of wort for the boil.
* I remembered to add the whirlfloc more than 3 seconds before the boil is supposed to end.
* My wort chiller brought the temp down to where I needed in under 20 minutes (and I remembered to add it to the boiling wort for sanitation purposes).
* I stirred my yeast starter for 36 hours before adding to the wort.
* When I canned (yes, canned!) my beer, I didn’t oxidize the shit out of it!

What pleasantly surprised me?
* I learned what pellicle is because I didn’t know wtf was going on with my fermentation and had to figure out what that weird layer was. Turns out it’s a good thing!

Why can’t I officially call this my first good batch of beer?
* I didn’t understand my can sealer (I do now!) and only 5 of the 30 cans ended up being carbonated.

In the end I made 5 beers worth drinking, which is 5 more than I’ve ever made before. I still have tons of room for improvement. I’m not very efficient with my grains and I’m still not confident enough in what I am doing to make my own recipes (I made this batch using a recipe off of brewers friend).