Brooklyn Brew Shop Single Hop Mosaic IPA kit

My wife bought me this kit for my birthday, largely because she wanted to give me the free shirt that came with it from Beer Hawk. The kit contains milled grain, yeast and hops. There is no indication of what malts are in the grist. The instructions are on their website and I followed them.

These kits are designed to make a US gallon (3.8 litres). Usually I brew 5 litres which gives me 4.5 litres for my secondary fermentation, after allowing for trub loss, and therefore nine 500ml bottles. 

I had quite a bit of trouble getting a constant mash temperature, which I thought might have been due to the size of the brew. However I did keep the temperature between 63 and 67 C as stated in the instructions. The next problem was the sparge, which was really slow as the grist had been milled very fine. The boil was straightforward but I ended up with only 2.3 litres instead of 3.8! The gravity was 1.082 so I boiled and cooled some more water. In the end I got 3.8 as with an OG of 1.054. The instructions didn't include a target OG but that seems about right.

I transferred the brew to secondary after 6 days. Gravity was 1.016 so still a way to go. More drawbacks of the US gallon size of this kit are that my hydrometer won't float in on the demijohn and that there is such a large surface area exposed to the headspace in the demijohn. After another week the gravity had dropped just a couple of points to 1.014 where the yeast seemed to have had enough. I would have hoped for a rather lower final gravity but it wasn't to be.

After a coupe of weeks to carbonate in the bottle I opened my 5.2% Mosaic IPA. There is a definite Mosaic aroma and a fruity flavour, but with a soft, smooth mouthfeel that I wouldn't expect from an American IPA, rather as if there were some oats in the grain bill. Not very bitter at all and with rather a sweet aftertaste, again not what I expected. I wonder if the mash temperature was too high. Overall it is a decent beer, just not what I expected - looking on the bright side though at least my son didn't drink it all!