To the Extreme! - Tom's extremely brown

Hi Everyone,

Tom's extremely brown was actually an amber ale wort bought from out local brew shop. We bought the wort for $40 and the yeast for $5. I gotta say, totally awesome.

Basically a wort is a pre-made solution of everything you need that comes in a giant 15 litre jug. All you need to add is yeast and 5-7l of water and you are done.

It was actually our very first brew, but, being that it was a wort we didn't need to do anything to it and it turned out awesome. Totally worth the extra moolah. This beer was elementally drinkable and had everything you want from a malty darker ale: the nutty/chocolate after taste, the raw yet smooth bitterness, low carbonation without being flat and that kind of heady palate that goes right through your nose to your brain without saying goodbye.

While it is a little more pricey than a lot of hte brews we make the extra money does show in the quality. As with most things you get what you pay for. Kits make really good beer, but you can spend up to $55 on a kit if you want to or as little as $8. The better the kit, the yeast and the malt solutions you use the better the beer will turn out. In this case it was excellent.

It had a very dark brown colour, with a good head (however head retention was surprisingly low; meaning that the head disapeared quite quickly with drinking) and a great aroma.

Better than: James Squire and practically everything else we have made apart from Bodens Belgium
Worse than: Chimay blue. I was racking my brain for any dark beer that wasn't a bloody tripaste or whatever they are called that was better than this. Chimay blue still has that extra alcohol but isn't as pretentious.. however it costs 160 a case so Tom's Extremely Brown is one eighth the price.
The same as: maybe something from another micro-brewery. There is a place in Sydney called the Lord Nelson, in the Rocks. They make their own beers and a few of theirs would match up to TEB, however again the price is prohibitive being that those are around 7 dollars a pint. The Australian, also in the Rocks, has a lot of Australian dark ales from all over the country, a couple of those would also match but again would be expensive.

[Boden note: We just put a second batch of this on. Can't wait! 26/06]