Strong English Ale, back on track!

Some of you may remember my Strong English ale that suffered from a lack of viable yeast. It eventually became infected, turned into vinegar, and became dumperbrau. Nothing is quite as disheartening as that.

"If first you don't succeed, brew, brew again." Sunday I brewed the same recipe again. Once again, the mash turned out wonderful. I extracted 6 gallons of beautiful 1.073 wort from the 15 or so pounds of grain. I added a quart of ACTIVE starter, and 8 hours later... Bubbles!!! Hoooray! it's fermenting! No nasty smells, just the smell of yeast cranking away on yummy fermentables. The blowoff hose is in place and I've got some of the starter in reserve in case the fermentation tapers off prematurely.

The moral of the story is, it's easy to get discouraged... but work through the problems and keep on brewing. Consider your failures to be tribute to the brewing gods. And above all else, don't worry about it. I planned this to be my Halloween brew but hey, Spiced Thanksgivingbrau works for me too. It will be consumed.

Good to hear things are going well on your redobreu

andre the giant said:

It will be consumed.

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Something about that sentence makes me wish I could bust out an evil laugh, but I'm still at the office, so I evil-laugh inside. Resistance is futile!

LupusUmbrus said:

Something about that sentence makes me wish I could bust out an evil laugh, but I'm still at the office, so I evil-laugh inside. Resistance is futile!

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It's Columbus Day! Surely someone in Columbus would be permitted an evil laugh or two today.

Very good news indeed! And a good thing to keep in mind if/when one of our brews goes south. Don't get discouraged, just consider it a

tribute to the brewing gods.

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Rhoobarb said:

Very good news indeed! And a good thing to keep in mind if/when one of our brews goes south. Don't get discouraged, just consider it a

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Yes we all have one or two go too the gods, Keep moving forward!

That's great news. I hate it when a good brew goes bad...

That's what taking notes and knowing where you/it went wrong helps the next batch.

Lots of yeast is good. Learned rather fast that one batch of yeast just doesn't make it for high gravity ales, although you can over do it. Some day I'll post a picture of what happens when you pitch an imperial IPA on the trub from a mild. (Think 30 minutes to blow the lid)