I'm not great at telling stories but will try to make this interesting so maybe others can learn and not give up hope to easily. Living in NC we get the hurricane scare just about every year and this year I decided to make the best of it. I collected about 20 gallons of fresh Hurricane Florence rain water to make a 5 gallon brew. I bought Vermont Ale yeast (first time using) 2 days before land fall so I would have everything ready for brew day. I planned to brew the day after the storm and decided to make a IPA with untreated fresh acid free rain water. Here is the recipe.
12lbs. 2 row
8oz. crystal 60
8oz. Munich
8oz. wheat
8oz. Vienna
1oz. Citra FWH
1oz. Chinook 10 minutes
2oz. Cascade 5 minutes
2oz. Mosaic 5 minutes
1oz. mosaic WP
1oz. centennial WP
mashed at 150, collected my 7 gallons and had an og of 1.07. Everything up to this point was as usual. Chilled and put into fermenter (we only lost power for 4 hours and did not get hit bad at all). Two days in I see nothing, which has happened before because the lids leak on some of my buckets so no biggie. Day 4 would be dry hop day (2oz. mosaic 2oz. centennial) and I take the top off and see nothing going on. Take gravity reading and its still at 1.07 and I'm thinking that after about 7 years I have my first no go with fermentation. I let it dry hop for a week and pull them out. I did not check gravity but needed to get it out of the fermenter and it still looked like fermentation never took off. I just left it in the garage with plans to just dump over the weekend. Well that weekend I was busy working and forgot about it. Yeah it was in the upper 80's to lower 90's during that time so the next weekend I was thinking it was going to be major funk fest in there. Well I took the lid off to dump and it looked like it had fermented. Smelled very good and was pretty clear already. I figured damn let me cold crash and see what happens. So I cold crash for 3 days and keg. For the life of me I don't know how but it survived and is a damn good IPA. I never did take a FG but based on taste and strength I would say it finished around 1.015. Just wanted to post incase others are debating if they should ride it out. I was going to write off the Vermont Ale but will probably use it again as after all this it still came through. The beer is named FloJo Rising as I live in JoCo NC. Cheers!
12lbs. 2 row
8oz. crystal 60
8oz. Munich
8oz. wheat
8oz. Vienna
1oz. Citra FWH
1oz. Chinook 10 minutes
2oz. Cascade 5 minutes
2oz. Mosaic 5 minutes
1oz. mosaic WP
1oz. centennial WP
mashed at 150, collected my 7 gallons and had an og of 1.07. Everything up to this point was as usual. Chilled and put into fermenter (we only lost power for 4 hours and did not get hit bad at all). Two days in I see nothing, which has happened before because the lids leak on some of my buckets so no biggie. Day 4 would be dry hop day (2oz. mosaic 2oz. centennial) and I take the top off and see nothing going on. Take gravity reading and its still at 1.07 and I'm thinking that after about 7 years I have my first no go with fermentation. I let it dry hop for a week and pull them out. I did not check gravity but needed to get it out of the fermenter and it still looked like fermentation never took off. I just left it in the garage with plans to just dump over the weekend. Well that weekend I was busy working and forgot about it. Yeah it was in the upper 80's to lower 90's during that time so the next weekend I was thinking it was going to be major funk fest in there. Well I took the lid off to dump and it looked like it had fermented. Smelled very good and was pretty clear already. I figured damn let me cold crash and see what happens. So I cold crash for 3 days and keg. For the life of me I don't know how but it survived and is a damn good IPA. I never did take a FG but based on taste and strength I would say it finished around 1.015. Just wanted to post incase others are debating if they should ride it out. I was going to write off the Vermont Ale but will probably use it again as after all this it still came through. The beer is named FloJo Rising as I live in JoCo NC. Cheers!