Well, it had to happen eventually. I’ve been having pretty good results with my beer brewing up until now, but something went wrong with my last batch. It was supposed to be a slightly less hoppy clone of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, but I took a little shortcut, and tried using a tea infusing ball to infuse the hops into the brew so I wouldn’t have to strain them out later. It wasn’t until after I was done brewing that I discovered that the hops had clumped up in the ball, and hadn’t become saturated. I thought that might not be a problem since I didn’t want it to be too hoppy anyway, but I was wrong. To complicate matters, something went wrong with the fermentation (I didn’t use enough yeast) and the yeast didn’t use up all the malt, so it came out way too sweet. There’s nothing more disgusting than sweet, malty beer with no hop flavor, and that’s what I got. I carbonated it, and tried to get used to drinking it, but I eventually decided it was undrinkable. Rather that throw it away or distill it, I decided to try fixing it. I warmed it back up and uncarbonated it, and then added a tiny bit of a sugar-digesting enzyme to free up some of the more complex sugars, and some alcohol tolerant champagne yeast to get the fermentation going again. Then, I took some nice fruity hops, and made a strong hop tea with them, and added that in an attempt to improve the hop character. The fermentation resumed as planned, and two weeks later, it was finished fermenting. I bottled some of it over the weekend, and kegged the rest of it today, and much to my surprise, I’m pleased to report that it came out pretty darn good …..
I’m calling it my 2011 Disaster Ale. Sue has been busy making Christmas candy to give as gifts, and assuming the bottled version of this ale is as good as the kegged version, I’ll probably be doing the same thing with my beer. Nothing but the best for my friends and family … LOL! I also have a smoked porter in the works too, and it tastes pretty good right now, but it supposedly gets better with age and I don’t want to rush it. If it’s ready by Christmas, maybe I’ll be giving away a little of that too …
Other than that, there’s not much to report from around here. It’s been a pretty warm November/December so far, but very wet. It’s kept us inside a lot, but I guess that’s not a big deal since we have a lot of things to do to get ready for Christmas. We’re looking forward to the holidays, and time with family, but it’s REALLY hard to believe the holidays are here again. Time just keeps flying by ….
Filed under: Living Life
