It was going to be a wheat beer. Specifically, a Belgian-style wheat beer, or "Wit" beer, if you will. (I will.) But it went all wrong...
First, we boiled it down too much and had to add a lot of extra water at the end to bring it up to 5 gallons. (Hence Nicci here with her delicate, lady-like pose filling up the fermenter, or "peeing in a bucket" if you will. I won't this time.) Next, the initial gravity reading suggested we would get maybe 3-4% alcohol, i.e., even if it worked, it would be watery. And then the fermentation got stuck (the yeastie-beasties stopped fermenting) for a few days.
The real kicker, though, was that when we woke up the morning after we stirred up the brew (which is apparently what you do for stuck fermentation) we found it had exploded in our laundry room! We didn't get any pictures, unfortunately, because we were too busy cleaning up dried beer scum. Luckily most of the beer liquid stayed in the bucket. Unfortunately, it must have gotten contaminated overnight (due to parachuting bacteria), because when we opened it up a few days later (to siphon it into the secondary fermenter) it smelled awful! Just to be sure, we tasted it and it tasted both sour and watery. Here is me pouring out our failed brew, trying to do it with a smile.
First, we boiled it down too much and had to add a lot of extra water at the end to bring it up to 5 gallons. (Hence Nicci here with her delicate, lady-like pose filling up the fermenter, or "peeing in a bucket" if you will. I won't this time.) Next, the initial gravity reading suggested we would get maybe 3-4% alcohol, i.e., even if it worked, it would be watery. And then the fermentation got stuck (the yeastie-beasties stopped fermenting) for a few days.
The real kicker, though, was that when we woke up the morning after we stirred up the brew (which is apparently what you do for stuck fermentation) we found it had exploded in our laundry room! We didn't get any pictures, unfortunately, because we were too busy cleaning up dried beer scum. Luckily most of the beer liquid stayed in the bucket. Unfortunately, it must have gotten contaminated overnight (due to parachuting bacteria), because when we opened it up a few days later (to siphon it into the secondary fermenter) it smelled awful! Just to be sure, we tasted it and it tasted both sour and watery. Here is me pouring out our failed brew, trying to do it with a smile.
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