Mu: Catharsis

It's been a few months since I last updated on the Kolsh beer project (or have posted at all, busy summer...) At this point I think the project can be classified as a failure.

Over the last few months, the beer had been mostly aging in secondary. As stated in previous updates, fermentation had continued slowly beyond the initial primary. I allowed this to continue for almost a month before putting the beer into the fridge to lager.

Two weeks ago, I racked it into a keg from secondary. The first observation was that fermentation seems to have continued while the beer was in the fridge. This was indicated by the presence of what looked like a small newly formed yeast cake, which had a different whiter color, and some additional floating clusters. Also, the sides of the fermenter were lined with yeast. The CO2 content of the beer was quite high also. Close to the volume you'd expect in something cask conditioned.

First the good:

The color was perfect, perhaps the lightest i've yet produced, very attractive. It looks exactly as the Wikipedia image suggests it should ;) I think waiting until the last 15 minutes to add the LME, as well as doing the mini-mash was key here. Previous to now, I had left the extract in for they entire boil, which seems to darken it quite a bit.

Similarly, the mouth feel, and head were quite good. The head was voluminous, creamy, and left that lacy pattern on the glass as it faded. I think this is a good indication that the unmalted barely did it's thing. Though, it may have also contributed to the long fermentation.

The malt profile is good. The beer is not too sweet. A good indication that fermentation was complete. There is enough biter to match the sweetness, at least, most of the time...

The bad:

The mysterious off flavor. This flavor is more present some times than others, making it very hard to troubleshoot. Occasionally it seems to fade nicely into the background giving the beer a mild 'phenolic' flavor. Other times, it seems to jump out, and totally destroy the balance of the beer, making it taste 'funny' 'rotten', or 'band-aid' like.

After doing a bit of reading, I'm inclined to believe this was related to some yeast contamination. Perhaps the result of overly re-using the yeast. There is a slight chance that this is related to poor sparging technique -- but given the volume of grains used and the strength of this flavor, I'm not convinced.

Conclusion:

I am going to give this beer another try... third times the charm. I will also need to work on my yeast recapture procedure. Perhaps I will put that off until I have more space to work with.