The Story of the Forgotton Homebrew

Digging through my fridge today, way in the back I found something. A bottle of the blonde ale I brewed last fall. This beer was designed by me to be similar to many of the Belgian blonde ales such as Leffe, usually I only let my beers that I brew condition in the bottle for 4 weeks or so but this one must have been forgotten about from the night we thought we finished them all. Being a lover of beer though and not having any other beer in my fridge I decided I would give it a try, couldn’t be too bad. So I opened the bottle and poured it into a glass in order to make sure it still had a good aroma, and to make sure nothing weird had happened with it.

The unopened bottle, nothing unusual, I guess that’s a good thing.



As soon as I opened the bottle all that I got was a ton of foam that did not stop, this was the result of my first attempt of pouring.


Eventually it settled to make this good colored but pretty cloudy beer. Looked the same as I remembered it from before though, so far nothing bad.


Smelling the beer I could tell it was a homebrew, had that distinct smell than any homebrewer would recognize of a homebrewed beer made with malt extract (don’t have my equipment to do an all-grain brew yet). I could notice the hops through the smell but the rest was masked by the homebrew scent. This brew I made a little hoppier than most blonde ales would be, because I was craving a nice hoppy beer at the time, and wanted to see how it would turn out.

The taste was not as bad as I expected, though little true flavor remained, was more of just a bland beer with a decent body, and a strong hop finish. I cannot say it was my favorite, nor was it as good as it had been before, but I easily was able to finish every last drop in the glass. Moral of the story, when you homebrew, drink the beer while it is still good and do not forget about it.