gunhaus
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- Mar 8, 2006
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This is a brewing lesson that is easy to forget sometimes!
Back on the day after Christmas, I set out to brew a batch of Ed Worts House APA. This an old familiar recipe well known to many on the forum; and one i have brewed a number of times. I got up early, set everything up, milled my grains, and promptly discovered that i had forgotten to stop and buy water. It was nasty outside, and town is 34 miles away . . . So i ran over to my mothers house and filled up on tap water - she has a very deep well, and very tasty water, so what the heck, we'll give it a go....
Now, I admit i made a couple changes from my norm on this brew. The LHBS talked me into trying some locally produced 2 row. And I decided to add a drop hop of 1 oz of Citra I had left over from another project. Nothing real big me thinks. So I brewed away. Things went pretty well, i missed on the OG by a couple points - But with a new malt and different water, no biggie.
I let her roll for two weeks in the conical, dumped the trub, cold crashed a couple days, close transferred to a keg on some gelatin, 25 psi for 24 hours, then 12 psi serving pressure for a week. The end result was meh. Not terrible, but not so great either. It seemed thin, and even with additional once of Citra, hop flavor was weak. Malt backbone was not there. The beer had cleared pretty nicely, but had a light haze to it. I wrote it off as a learning experience on the water and the new malt.
This was somewhere toward the end of the second week in Jan into the third week. Over the next two weeks, friends and family sort of dabbed and dipped into it and beat up the keg fairly well. I figured a bit of time would help some, but there was just something about this brew i did not think was going to improve, and most of my critics agreed. . Plus i needed the keg. So end of the first week in Feb, I bottled up the last three 6 packs. One I gave to a friend. the other two I was gonna stash for another day in the spare fridge. THAT is when an epic catastrophic occurrence befell my day. Almost in unison, the bottoms dropped out of the well worn cardboard six pack holders into which i had just stuffed my newly bottled beer!!!! Ten of the twelve immediately smashed to oblivion on the shop floor. Two survived, but one of those was spurting beer from under the cap. I set the two whole bottles aside on a bench while i cleaned up the mess. There they sat till an hour ago.
All these beers had been filled with the method outlined elsewhere by Biermuncher. No snazzy counter flow filler or any extravagant purging. A cut of racking cane, and bung, and a picnic tap. ONE, had seemingly survived the now nearly forgotten episode in tact. The other had clearly lost a good bit of beer. I took them both in to salvage the bottles. The partial beer was as flat as you would think. But the full bottle made a nice psst when the top came off, and a little vapor swirled up from the top. Hmmmmm.
I grabbed a glass and made a pour! What-do-ya-know . . . . Out comes a CRYSTAL CLEAR APA. As clear as any good lager I have ever had. A nice creamy head. A virtual bubble show. HMMMMM. Not ice cold, but it is only about 45 in the shop. I take a swig . . .
After i got done weeping and lamenting the loss of the spilled beer, and then finished cursing myself for making RUSH judgments when i am old enough to know better, I settled back and enjoyed the rest of the pint! I can almost hear an i told ya so from ED. Sometimes good old time is you buddy! Sometimes we all get in way too much of a hurry to get after our latest creation, and probably miss out on occasion as a result. This last bottle was really only about 14 weeks old - Not so old in beer years. And i find myself really wishing i had just set it and forget it . . . I guess i am now on a mission of recreation!!! (Minus the dropping it on the floor part)
(I would like to add: In spite of its simplicity and the obsessive fear of ALL THING O2 that currently prevails in the Home brew community. The simple bottling approach used above has worked many times for me, with many many beers still being perfectly carbed and free of all those evil O2 buggerman symptoms, that many would assure me WILL occur using such a primitive method - weeks and even months later. I know, I know, it is just pure, blind, unwashed, god watches fools, luck . . . . )
Back on the day after Christmas, I set out to brew a batch of Ed Worts House APA. This an old familiar recipe well known to many on the forum; and one i have brewed a number of times. I got up early, set everything up, milled my grains, and promptly discovered that i had forgotten to stop and buy water. It was nasty outside, and town is 34 miles away . . . So i ran over to my mothers house and filled up on tap water - she has a very deep well, and very tasty water, so what the heck, we'll give it a go....
Now, I admit i made a couple changes from my norm on this brew. The LHBS talked me into trying some locally produced 2 row. And I decided to add a drop hop of 1 oz of Citra I had left over from another project. Nothing real big me thinks. So I brewed away. Things went pretty well, i missed on the OG by a couple points - But with a new malt and different water, no biggie.
I let her roll for two weeks in the conical, dumped the trub, cold crashed a couple days, close transferred to a keg on some gelatin, 25 psi for 24 hours, then 12 psi serving pressure for a week. The end result was meh. Not terrible, but not so great either. It seemed thin, and even with additional once of Citra, hop flavor was weak. Malt backbone was not there. The beer had cleared pretty nicely, but had a light haze to it. I wrote it off as a learning experience on the water and the new malt.
This was somewhere toward the end of the second week in Jan into the third week. Over the next two weeks, friends and family sort of dabbed and dipped into it and beat up the keg fairly well. I figured a bit of time would help some, but there was just something about this brew i did not think was going to improve, and most of my critics agreed. . Plus i needed the keg. So end of the first week in Feb, I bottled up the last three 6 packs. One I gave to a friend. the other two I was gonna stash for another day in the spare fridge. THAT is when an epic catastrophic occurrence befell my day. Almost in unison, the bottoms dropped out of the well worn cardboard six pack holders into which i had just stuffed my newly bottled beer!!!! Ten of the twelve immediately smashed to oblivion on the shop floor. Two survived, but one of those was spurting beer from under the cap. I set the two whole bottles aside on a bench while i cleaned up the mess. There they sat till an hour ago.
All these beers had been filled with the method outlined elsewhere by Biermuncher. No snazzy counter flow filler or any extravagant purging. A cut of racking cane, and bung, and a picnic tap. ONE, had seemingly survived the now nearly forgotten episode in tact. The other had clearly lost a good bit of beer. I took them both in to salvage the bottles. The partial beer was as flat as you would think. But the full bottle made a nice psst when the top came off, and a little vapor swirled up from the top. Hmmmmm.
I grabbed a glass and made a pour! What-do-ya-know . . . . Out comes a CRYSTAL CLEAR APA. As clear as any good lager I have ever had. A nice creamy head. A virtual bubble show. HMMMMM. Not ice cold, but it is only about 45 in the shop. I take a swig . . .
After i got done weeping and lamenting the loss of the spilled beer, and then finished cursing myself for making RUSH judgments when i am old enough to know better, I settled back and enjoyed the rest of the pint! I can almost hear an i told ya so from ED. Sometimes good old time is you buddy! Sometimes we all get in way too much of a hurry to get after our latest creation, and probably miss out on occasion as a result. This last bottle was really only about 14 weeks old - Not so old in beer years. And i find myself really wishing i had just set it and forget it . . . I guess i am now on a mission of recreation!!! (Minus the dropping it on the floor part)
(I would like to add: In spite of its simplicity and the obsessive fear of ALL THING O2 that currently prevails in the Home brew community. The simple bottling approach used above has worked many times for me, with many many beers still being perfectly carbed and free of all those evil O2 buggerman symptoms, that many would assure me WILL occur using such a primitive method - weeks and even months later. I know, I know, it is just pure, blind, unwashed, god watches fools, luck . . . . )
