Brew #1 Tasting - APA vs. Moe's Backroom Pale Ale

Since I finally got the blog up and running four months after we brewed this, I decided it would be a fitting celebration to drink the final Adrian Peterson Ale (APA) and conduct a basic a taste test.  The APA wasn't a memorable brew, but it was definitely beer and beer is good.  I didn't want to aim too high in my taste test comparison so I went to Kroger and bought a sixer of the Moe's Backroom Pale Ale.  Welcome to Moe's!  It is a decidedly average pale ale - better than a commercial light lager and still falls well short of something like a Sweetwater 420. In the photo, the TD APA is the darker beer on the left and the Moe's is on the right.

I didn't refrigerate this bottle until a few days ago, which means it lost the nice bit of hop taste and aroma that it had back in November/December.  I enjoyed drinking it, but I won't be writing about it like the guys on BeerAdvocate.  It "poured an amber caramel color with a one finger head that dissipated quickly into micro thin lacing that reminds me of my grandmother's favorite negligee..." (I'm not that magniloquent with my beer reviews.)  I know an APA shouldn't be this dark and it had a slight haze so the Moe's has a better appearance. Welcome to Moe's!  But we were novices and didn't create the recipe.  Otherwise, these 2 beers were very similar in smell, aroma, and mouthfeel.  Very average with malty flavors and a little too bitter without much hop presence.  I would rate them both a 2.5/5 in overall drinkability.  If I had to choose which beer to buy, I would buy the TD APA because it was fun to brew and cost $.95/beer compared to the Moe's which was $1.15/beer.  WOOHOO!  I saved 20 cents/beer.  The most important lesson from this first beer was: we made something on our FIRST TRY that tasted significantly better than commercial lager piss and approximately the same as an average ale.

Final score: not a Touchdown brew, but a solid 40 yard field goal. 

Todd