Style: Brown Ale
Grains: 18 oz., 60 minute soak in 1.5 gal.
Malt: 6.3 lbs Muntons light, 60 minute boil in 3.0 gal.
Hops: 1.0 oz. Styrian Goldings @ 60 minutes, 0.5 oz. Fuggles @ 30 minutes, 0.5 oz. Fuggles @ 5 minutes
Fermentation: 5.0 gal. total liquid, Wyeast London III
Yield: 47 12 oz. bottles, 3/4 cups corn sugar as primer
Appearance: Medium brown, cloudy, huge tan-colored head that subsided after several minutes, light lacings
Aroma: Trace of malt
Mouthfeel: Very full
Taste: Bitter, blah
Verdict: An unpleasant ale
Comments: Houston, we have a problem. Two, in fact.
First, the carbonation is excessive in this beer, and a normal pour results in a huge head. With a careful pour down the side and a judicious sip of foam near the end, I can work a whole beer into a glass. All the fizz ruins the mouthfeel and makes me look like rabid dog if swirl the beer around in my mouth a bit. Back when I was bottling this batch I
complained about the lack of carbonation in previous batches but I was hoping to go from one to two, not from one to twenty.
Second, the taste is blah - slightly bitter at the beginning, slightly harsh at the end, and without much maltiness. Perhaps this is the style or recipe, but more likely is that whatever caused the carbonation problem also affected the taste.
One thing to note is that the problem is batch-wide. I tried three beers from one six-pack, and then two from elsewhere in the batch, and they all had the same problems. The last two behaved even worse as they were at room temperature when I opened them, and most of the beer promptly self-foamed out. This stirred up the fairly thick layer of sediment into the beer that remained, making it positively soupy instead of just cloudy.
So what went wrong? One possibility is that I bottled the beer too soon, when there was still a lot of fermentation to left to do. Another is that by cleaning my bottles a day early, they all had the chance to get contaminated by airborne nasties. Another is that it was contaminated elsewhere during the brewing or bottling process. I suspect the first, but I don't really know.
Well, I was bound to have a disappointing batch sometime. Still, it is frustrating. I've moved the batch to the basement to let it coolish-condition for a bit, and I will sample the batch again in two weeks. Fortunately I still have some tasty batch two porter left, and I am now off to drown my sorrows in that.
Because I've made a few missteps lately I decided to brew my very tasty first batch again, though with a few modifications such as a liquid yeast and a bit more hops. Brewing was straightforward, though as usual the foam on the chilled wort prevented me from getting an accurate reading of the initial gravity. Another frustration is that I am going through C-Brite sanitizer like crazy. I will be looking for something more cost-effective on my next trip to the homebrew supply shop.
