Quality control - Porter

Tasting Porter brewed 20/10/2016

Colour looks ok!

I always get a bit nervous whenever I taste a homebrewed beer for the first time. There's an established chain of actions to go through. If it's a pale beer hold it up to the light and see how clear it is, although obviously not applicable in this case I try to see if the yeast sediment has settled at the bottom of the bottle. Next, I open the bottle and hopefully get the satisfying "pssst" noise and the plume of vapour swirling out of the top of the bottle. Sometimes this is followed by a bit of frothing but not the dreaded geyser/fire hydrant effect. In this case everything was encouragingly spot on. So far so good, but next it's time to actually taste the beer and for this Porter I was pretty well pleased. It's not quite as hoppy as I thought it might be but it is very well balanced, quite bitter but with no overpowering burnt or roasted notes and fairly dry, not too sweet with a slightly hoppy aftertaste. Phew! Better have another now, just to confirm my initial findings.