Frustrated home brewer

1. Try a different malt. Presumably, you are using extracts, so this would definitely explain your high final gravity. Some liquid malts are more attenuative than others (some can not be fermented as well as others).

1. If your German friend things that your beer tastes like Samual Adams and you have brewed an ale (a wheat ale at that), your friend has absolutely no idea what he is talking about. Ignore his comments and move on :)

2. Amber Ale could very well taste like an IPA if they have the same hop bill. The difference is often the amount of hops and the sweetness or color. If you are using extracts, you lose a little control of ways to differentiate them.

I might suggest you look at buying a kit from a reputable vendor. I can suggest a few.

(only extract kits)

Tom Veldhouse

PS. Please don't post with HTML

I've brewed three batches of beer and they _all_ seem to taste the same!!! These were all kit beers.

1. First was an IPA (seemed pretty good),
2. the second was an American Wheat (one German guy who drank it said, "that would make a great SAM ADAMS" (It as supposed to be a Hefeweizen-style beer!!!)
3. The third was an Amber ale. It was fairly indistinguishable from the IPA!!!

I read other posts on here about temperature being critical during yeast pitching and am wondering if my basement where the wort gets to a stable temp of 68/69F is just too warm even for Ales?? Would that have anything to do with it? If I modify my fridge what should I be able to set it at (again, relying on suggestions in the book Brew Ware by Lutzen).

My Final Specific Gravity has been very, very high at bottling for all three (1.018 - 1.020). I even let the Wheat and the Amber sit for 14 days to see if the yeast would go longer but that didn't seem to change things for either batch! Any suggestions on how to keep the yeast going longer to bring SG down to the vaunted 1.012 - 1.014.

Thanks for any suggestions you might provide.

Hi Glen!

That's good

Am American wheat beer isn't anything at all like a German hefe. American wheats use a neutral yeast ti give a mild neutral flavor, German hefes use a yeast that generates a lot of banana and clove esters.

Well, to me, that would mean that either the IPA was underhopped or the APA was overhopped.

That's actually a great temp.

In brewing with extracts, the particular brand of extract has a lot to do with the FG...some extracts are much less fermentable than others, which makes any estiamte of FG you see in a recipe no more than a wild guess. I would guess that your yeast is doing all it can, but there just aren't enough fermentables in the wort for it to eat. You might want to try formulating your own recipes or buyinbg a different brand of kit to see if that cures the "sameness".

You're very welcome...I hope this helps. 2 other things I might suggest...post your questions to rec.crafts.brewing, if you aren't already...it's much more active than this group, and has a larger pool of experienced brewers. And take a look at

by John Palmer...it's pretty much the last word in extract brewing these days.

--------------->Denny

I guess what I was getting at was that they're both fairly light, bland beers. And the real point is that an American wheat beer is light years away from a German wheat beer.

--------->Denny

DOH! Not to mention that the OP never said SABL, he just said his friend said "that would make a great SAm Adams". Man, I should try to read more carefully!

------->Denny

Alright, you are correct there. Many different Samuel Adams Brews out there. But I suspect there is only one that a German would have tried ;)

BTW .. Samuel Adams Boston Lager is a good campfire session beer (as opposed to Miller and friends). Certainly better than an emergency ;) You don't need as many glasses of water to go with it.

Tom Veldhouse

More than likely, but who knows...

Man, we have _got_ to get you out here to BeerNirvana! Around here, the closest SABL would get to a campfire is to pour it on to put the fire out! ;)

-------->Denny

I wholeheartedly disagree. Sam Adams Boston Lager is certainly one of the finest beers in the world. I drink it all the time, when I don't have a bottle or two of my own homebrew handy. The Hersbrucker Mittelfruh is what makes it so damn good, not to mention the malt balance. Just because it isn't an IPA or a stout, or just because it is a macrobrew and is widely available, doesn't mean it isn't any good. :)