Mu: Catharsis

A re-hash of last years Porter.

A few months back C's Brother, who has a very different brewing philosophy than I, brewed an ESB. After some discussion, it was obvious that the exactly meaning of the label 'ESB', (extra special bitter), was not particularly well understood by me. Further investigation lead me to a believe that ESB was a term applied to a bitter (or amber ale) that was stronger than normal. Not very helpful given the wide rang of options for what could be called a bitter.

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.

After a few months of keg-aging, the beer has improved quite nicely. I've gone though about three of the five gallons already. Which I think makes this recipe a success. The plan now is bottle the rest of it to free the keg for an oatmeal stout. Hopefully some of these bottles will get hidden away long enough to observe the effects of some additional time :)

A brief update. This beer seems to have been a total success! It's been sitting in secondary at fridge temperatures for a little longer than four weeks. This is more than I normally allow for, but I had a bit of a bottle-neck, since one of my kegs had failed to hold pressure due to a bad seal. However this extended period of bulk aging seems to have done the beer good. The flavor is almost exactly as I wanted the ester profile balanced nicely with the malt. The yeast I used for this beer is now building volume for the next project. I may also need to get another keg...

Racked Kolsch into it's secondary, so far the flavor is what I want, and the gravity looks good.

Furthering my quest to branch out into more 'girl friendly' (read fruity) beers, I have been considering doing a cherry ale. Trader Joe's has a 'Tart' Just Cherry juice that seems like a reasonable place to start. The juice tastes basically like cherry pie filling, without all that corn syrup and starch. It's 100% juice from concentrate, and seems to be reconstituted to a perfect 1.060 specific gravity. Possible recipe to follow shortly.

Since this beer is going on tap tonight, I've racked it into a keg, and am planning to put it under about 15 psi. I hope to get some good feedback on the hop selection tonight. Meanwhile, I think this puppy is done!

Primary fermentation started strongly, with noticeable bubbles at 24 hours, and air-lock activity around 48. This continued for two days, before slowing. By day 7 all seemed quiescent, so I racked it to carboy for secondary. After 36 hours at room temperature, there was substantial yeast precipitation. The brew is now in the fridge, with hopes of additional clarification in time for it's intended audience on Saturday.

What does a guy do when he's invited to an art-opening themed party? Well, he offers to supply libations of course! Since I've had so much positive feedback on the Amber Ale in the past, I figured I should produce another batch. This time however, with the recent hop shortage, I was unable to find the flavor hops the previous recipes called for, so, substitution was in order.