Oh-ho! So, moving away from that clear sample bottle into the proper brown beer bottles and this stuff is pretty good. It's more like drinking straight-up alcoholic wort. There's no real taste to it besides that. Which makes sense because this is all canned, packaged stuff. If I want to start getting beer that tastes like the stuff off the shelf, I want to move into all-grain and the real art and science of all this. Right now it's basically hobo beer -- boil water, add a can of shit, dump in other shit, stare blankly at it for an hour.
I actually did the second brew today...and had a few disasters because I'm feverish and out of my mind. It's a pilsner, but I don't have high hopes for it. My new concern is getting a more robust taste. I'm going to move into stouts and porters after this. One of each, using kits. Just get the process down so I'm not having to read through a checklist. Then I'm going to get into the serious stuff.