I'd like to kick things off with a comment about the most recent addition to the Brass Hat Brewing catalogue, our "Smokey The Beer", a smoked amber ale based on a Northern Brewers extract kit. Out of all the beers we've made to date, this is the first to come up limp. The rest have been nicely carbonated and produced bountiful heads and lacing, but this one is very tame to say the least. It tastes so good that I still enjoy it a lot, but I'm wondering what went wrong here considering we think we followed the same procedure for every beer. Having tried a few, Ron & I don't think the caps were poorly applied on all of them. Any ideas on why this would happen? Suggestions? Craig
Mike Y
10/11/2011 10:49:40 am
.for starters (no pun intended), this is a great online priming calculator that i use pretty much every time i brew:
Gambrinus
10/11/2011 11:02:24 am
Can't be certain, but yeast is a fickle beast, and it may not have been too pleased with the conditions of the beer during fermentation/carbonation, or simply, it may have been a bad (dormant) strain. It's easier for commercial brewers to test and adjust yeast to ensure more homogeneous brewing processes, but with small 5-gal batches like we do, you often won;t find out until the fat lady sings if you've got a dud on your hands. What tempt did your ale ferment at and did you use a different yeast than what the kit provided? These are sort of stabs in the dark, like all of our efforts, but may be something worth putting in your brewer's notes for next time. Sorry you were less than thrilled with it, guys. Keep on truckin'! Leave a Reply. | 
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AuthorCraig of Brass Hat Brewing in Watertown, CT ArchivesJanuary 2013 CategoriesAll |
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