The amount of banana ester makes me wonder about your starter. Is it possible you underpitched? How big of a starter did you make? I would say given that gravity I would expect it to be around 3L (assuming one activator pack). The temp played a role for sure, but I accidentally let mine get to 78F during the first 48 hours and I have very minimal banana flavor.
I made a 1.5L starter from an activator pack. It took off pretty quickly, but I suppose it's possible it wasn't enough. I can definitely try a bigger starter next time, seems like I'm certainly unlikely to overpitch.
I missed low on OG and got 1.072. Entered as a Dubbel in a local homebrew comp and got a 35.5, but didn't place (20 entries in Belgian Strong Ales).
Might try entering it again as it ages. It was only bottled for 24 days at competition time and I think it's really good right now.
I bottled into 17 750ml Belgian bottles with corks and cages, 2 375ml Belgians, and the rest into regular long necks. All bottle conditioned. The Belgians will be aged until Christmas and given out as gifts.
BrewThruYou, don't be discouraged by the competition results. Although your OG was a little low I'm sure the end result was still good. Bottle conditioning the brew is a must, and with patients you will be rewarded with an outstanding ale. Re-enter a comp in six months from now with a couple of those bottles and I'm sure the result will be different. Good luck!
ok, after my visit to Rochefort in October, i HAVE to tackle this clone of 8!!!!
Gomer (the brewer with glasses on, second from left), Pere Jacques our tour guide of the abbey & host (with which we ate cookies and drank beer with!) and me sitting on the right. Awesome day....
Everyone is talking about bottling this beer - do you think that the priming and bottle conditioning process adds anything to the flavour profile?
I brewed this a couple of months ago and it's sitting in a cool garage, I was going to keg it but do you think I'll be missing a trick by not bottling?
I think this style is supposed to be bottle conditioned - the real one definitely is. And I think bottle conditioning adds to the character. This beer is high enough gravity that it certainly needs some conditioning time. If it's been sitting in your cool garage for a couple of months that should have helped. Has it been on a yeast cake that whole time? If you keg, you'll probably still get a good tasting beer, but probably not like a bottle. The ones I brewed over a year ago now seem to just keep getting better. Certainly a beer worthy of cellaring.
Hm, maybe I will make the effort to bottle it then.
If I've counted correctly, I think it had about 3 weeks in primary (rising from 66 to 73 degrees) then 6 weeks in the garage (varying from 32 to 55), still on the yeast cake. I guess it's ready to put in the bottle?
That should be plenty of time bulk conditioning, especially if it was on the primary cake that whole time. For mine I planned on a 4 week primary, but got the flu and waited till 5 weeks.
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