Did I ruin my Dead Ringer IPA?

Ozarks Mountain Brewery · Mar 1, 2015

one thing to mention you seem to not be measuring the wort its self but the air or water around it, the banana flavor is a direct result of high wort temperature meaning the water or air was correct but the wort raised its temps too high while fermenting, this is hard to measure as a new brewer but the wort is what we measure not the anything else. for best results you use a thermocouple inside the fermentation vessel and measure the wort its self, good luck hope it gets better in time

Jmancan · Mar 1, 2015

Tried another ringer. Two weeks bottled. Seems better already. Hop presence, sweetness a bit more mellowed. I can see how this could use 3-5 weeks to develop. There is hope!

Brewed the cascade mountain imperial IPA today. On a NB kick! Anyone do that one?

Mountainsax · Mar 2, 2015

Jmancan, you and i are on the same track! Just brewed the Cascade IIPA today. We were using a 10 gal Tall Boy kettle for the first time and over estimated the amount of boil off that we would have so at the end of the boil we probably still had 6.25 gallons. OG came in at 1.064 instead of 1.086, so it won't be very imperial but hopefully it will still be a good IPA.

Jmancan · Mar 2, 2015

Excellent! Did you use a blowoff? My OG was up in the 1.088 + range. Even after topping up at 5.5 gallon. Probably should have went to 6 but maybe will add some boiled water after fermentation. Can't make up my mind.

Mountainsax · Mar 2, 2015

We did use a blowoff tube. We put probably 6 gallons in our 6 gallon carboy so there wasn't a lot of head space. I use the shake it method to aerate. Since there wasn't much head space, and thus not much air to get into the wort, I did another round of shaking 12 hours after the first. That was this morning and tonight no major action yet. Fermenting at around 62 so not expecting super vigorous activity right away.