Help me explain this to my wife!

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damdiver

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My wife loves citra hops, so earlier this year, I made her the B3 Citra Pale Ale Recipe. It was one of my first AG batches. It is 12 lbs 2row, 8oz White Wheat, 8 oz Carapils and 12 oz Crystal. I had terrible efficiency and in the fermentor had 5 gallons at 1.046. She loved the beer and has drank almost the entire 5 gallon keg.

So, the great husband that I am, I brewed her another batch today. Since the first batch, I've done about 12 AG batches, learned alot about my water and how to treat it, built a RIMS toolbox and a really cool sparge ring. The exact same recipe yielded a 5 gallons at 1.082!

She is tickled pink that she's got another batch in the works, so when her first keg is gone, she'll have another.......but this isn't going to be the same beer!

I don't imagine it will be the same color, I know it won't be the same flavor and the alcohol is going to be increased by almost 2! After 1 pint, her 120 lb butt is gonna be toasted!:tank:

I know it's an improvement, other brewers know it's an improvement, how do I explain to my wife that the new beer is better?
 
If she's going to be toasted, well then you won't need to explain anything! She'll feel good and won't remember anyways!
 
If it's too strong for her (8+% ABV yikes) then brew the same recipe but reduce your basemalt so you end up with the same grav as the first time. Now that you've got your efficiency dialed in, you can save on grain and make her happy.
 
Ummm... Perhaps be honest? Explain how this beer is different than the first because the past dozen brews allowed you to refine your technique. The next time that you make her favorite ale you will save yourselves $X!
 
Quickly brew a much smaller version and blend it! Or even for speed do a light dme brew with some hops and only do like 1.020 og of a couple of gallons and add it while the other batch when finished or still in primary if you have time and room.
 
Tell her that since you have more practice at it now, this one turned out a lot stronger than before, so it might not be quite the same. Next time, either cut down on the base malt or just top it up with water until you hit something in the 1.050 range, and make 7 or 8 gallons of beer instead of 5. :)
 
Did you notice your efficiency going up and up during the last 12 batches? You could of caught it an adjusted the recipe before having to deal with this, but I would just explain it to her and that if she doesn't like it (hopefully you will) that you will rebrew it another time and try and hit the original taste now you are a better brewer
 
My wife loves citra hops, so earlier this year, I made her the B3 Citra Pale Ale Recipe. It was one of my first AG batches. It is 12 lbs 2row, 8oz White Wheat, 8 oz Carapils and 12 oz Crystal. I had terrible efficiency and in the fermentor had 5 gallons at 1.046. She loved the beer and has drank almost the entire 5 gallon keg.

So, the great husband that I am, I brewed her another batch today. Since the first batch, I've done about 12 AG batches, learned alot about my water and how to treat it, built a RIMS toolbox and a really cool sparge ring. The exact same recipe yielded a 5 gallons at 1.082!

She is tickled pink that she's got another batch in the works, so when her first keg is gone, she'll have another.......but this isn't going to be the same beer!

I don't imagine it will be the same color, I know it won't be the same flavor and the alcohol is going to be increased by almost 2! After 1 pint, her 120 lb butt is gonna be toasted!:tank:

I know it's an improvement, other brewers know it's an improvement, how do I explain to my wife that the new beer is better?

How about this:

"I'm much better at brewing all grain brews now, but I haven't figured out how to modify my recipes to compensate for my increased efficiencies yet, so the same recipes I use from earlier are going to have a higher ABV than they did before."
 
Looks like an educated mistake to me :)

"Oops, I know my efficiency is very high now, but I do not tune my recipe accordingly"

Do you build your recipe yourself and change the quantity of ingredient to fit your equipment/efficiency ? Beersmith is very useful for this.
 
I would just explain what happened. Even if she's not a brewer, I'd imagine she'd be intelligent enough to understand the explanation. Tell her that you'll brew it again with the original gravity as your goal then scale down your base grain to do so.


Or, just tell her this is the winter warmer version and you don't make mistakes:)
 
Awesome, pure awesome explaination!

x2

Thanks for all the input. I've enjoyed reading everyone's suggestions. I told her it is going to be different. If she doesn't care for the new version, I'm going to scale down the grain for a "lighter" batch next time.

I bought Beersmith, that oughta help me out for next time.
 
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