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.

Just racked into secondary, the gravity is a bit high. The taste is a bit sweet too, but not quite so much as the gravity implies. Could it be that some of this is a result of using so much un-malted barely? I'll give it another week in secondary, and see how it goes. Perhaps I'll pitch additional yeast.

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 :)

Last night I moved the beer over to secondary. Observations: The gravity is currently between 1.021 and 1.020, which I think is a little higher than I want. Although, even with that, the flavor is not cloying. The hops, and other various flavor components that were present in the wort are still there. Especially evident are the various dark malts, and the black treacle. The yeast has added a hint of fruity esters, but they seem to meld well. Let's see what another week in secondary brings us. This one may also might end up being bottled to age for a few moths.

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.

It's been several weeks since my third scotch ale attempt reached it's terminal gravity. At that time, I noted some rather unpleasant bitterness which had me worried the batch was spoiled. After deciding it might have been a failure, I immediately wanted to start on my fourth attempt (more on that soon). So into the keg it went. Happily, some few weeks later, it's now quite drinkable . Well carbonated, clear, and otherwise pretty damn good.

After reactivaing that stuck fermentation, things bubbled along for the proceeding five or so days. Last night, despite there still being some off-gassing, I measured a gravity of 1.010. I decided it was a good time to finally rack it into the secondary fermenter. Ten+ days after pitching, it was still going, which, given the stuck fermentation may make sense -- but seemed longer than most common cases. I was starting to worry that some spoilage might sneak it's way in if I didn't clear out the old settled yeast cells.

By Wednesday afternoon, the bubbling had pretty much stopped. I took this as an OK sign, until I took a gravity reading. It was pathatically high, and the wart was very sweet yet. I decided to let it sit, another 24 hours, and see what happened. Thursday afternoon, I checked again, and nothing much had changed -- Stuck Fermentation? gah! At that point, the fermentation had stopped around FG = 1.040. Given an IG = 1.058, we were looking at: ApparentAttenuation = (1 - (FG - 1)/(OG - 1)) * 100