Dark Lager - Tasting

It has been four months since I brewed up this dark lager - my first attempt at a lager.  This was comprised of a 3 week primary fermentation, 6 week lagering period and than a good month and a half to allow it to bottle condition as I chose not to add any more yeast at bottling.  I was starting to wonder if it would ever carb given the 6 weeks at 35 F during the lager but this beer proves that yeast are a pretty hardy organism.

I was hoping this would turn out to be a flavorable malt forward beer.  It has turned out to meet that objective.  I am also enjoying the very clean lager yeast character in this beer - it really does allow the other ingredients to shine through.  The beer finished up a bit higher than expected (1.020 vs 1.016) but I think that helps sell the malt character a bit and it still has really good drinkability - I'd take a bit sweeter over a bit drier than desired with this beer.

I'm pretty happy that I managed to produce a lager without any off flavors.  I've enjoyed the process and will look to brew some more of these beers.

Tasting Notes:

• Aroma:
• Clean aroma.  Sweet malt.  Very light grassy hop smell.
• Appearance:
• Pours with a two finger head that quickly settles down to a thin layer that lasts for the entire glass.  Leaves slight lacing.  Dark brown color.  Very clear but it has hop particles in suspension even after spending several days in the fridge.
• Flavor:
• Very crisp and clean flavor up front.  Some cool alcohol in the middle.  The finish is slightly sweet and bready malt with a bit of hop bitterness.  I'm not detecting anything I can identify as flavoring hops
• Mouth-feel:
• It's medium bodied but pretty easy drinking.  Carbonation is light.  The flavor coats my mouth and lingers.
• Overall:
• It's a nice malt forward beer.  I really like the sweetness in the finish.  The slight bitterness is enough to balance the sweetness.  It has the clean, lager, taste I was expecting - not really sure how to describe it except that it's very much like commercial lagers.  It would be interesting to brew this beer with a flavorful English yeast for comparison.