Smoken' Dirty Blond Bottling and Tasting

The other night I got around to bottling my Dirty Blond, and grabbed a taste of my gravity sample.  The recipe this beer can be found here.   Here is my final haul from this batch.

I ended up a little light with approximately the volume of 45 12oz bottles.  Not too bad once you figure in trub loss and and a few gravity samples.  The Color came in right about where I wanted it, maybe just a touch darker than I had hoped.  I would estimate it came in somewhere between 7-8 SRM.  It turned out actually much clearer that I thought it would given the oats and the wheat in the recipe.  At this point is is pretty close to crystal clear.  After the bottle conditioning It may be be crystal clear by the time its ready to drink in three weeks or so.

Now for the long awaited tasting.  I have to say that I was really looking forward to getting a hint of what this might taste like as at least from the recipe it is a pretty unique combination of flavors.  The FG came out a bit higher than I anticipated at 1.018 vs the 1.016 that iBrewmaster calculated so I was expecting this to be a little on the thicker and sweeter side.  It should be noted that I am tasting this beer warm and flat so the tastes may change a bit once bottle conditioned and chilled.

The Nose
I get some malt and hops in the nose no real signs of smokiness from the smoked malt.  I am also getting so hints of vanilla.  The hop smell has an earthy aroma which I was expecting from using all kent goldings

The Taste
It is an interesting taste very clean on the front end.  I am tasting a bit of the smokiness on the back end with the hops.  At the moment the hops are a bit too much to make this really balanced but this should lessen with some time in the bottle.  I am also tasting a bit of bourbon which I was not expecting.  Over all this pretty interesting and I like it.  It is clean and pretty refreshing I think carbonated and cooled after about 3 more weeks it should be a really nice beer.  I will hold off final judgement until then but at the moment I think I will add more smoked malt in the future.  It tastes really good but I was wanting a bit more pronounced smokey character.  I am excited for a full tasting in about 3 weeks