That 9 out of 10 is encouraging. Jay gave me most of his first batch and I noticed that they did get better with time. I think I drank the last one when it was just about 3 months old. I will be bottling next weekend and then I plan to put the bottles in the basement for a month. The basement is the perfect temperature right now, about 66 F, dark and quite.

For the next batch, perhaps I will buy a water filter and see if it makes a difference.

My main suggestion would be to greatly increase the time to wait before drinking from what they recommend.

I think that they say you can drink the beer after it’s been in the bottles for only 3-weeks. I tried that and was very unimpressed. Make me regret spending my time doing it.

I waited another two weeks and it was better, then another two weeks after that made it taste very good. My father in law gave it a 9 out of 10.

I don’t think that there are any preservatives in the beer, so mine started to taste funny after about 3-months in the bottles. By that time I didn’t have much left, so it wasn’t a big deal, but from about week 8 – 13 was the best drinking time. Your own experience could differ though depending on the brewing temperature.

Also, if you use filtered water it makes a big difference, just like coffee.

Good luck with it. It’s a lot of fun to brew your own beer and then enjoy the fruits of you labour.

Todd, I know what you mean about time, but so far I think I have about 2 hours into it. Once I bottle this batch, I’ll let you know about total time. IMHO, if the beer comes out good, then it is well worth the time.