August 25, 2006

I stopped at Shoreline last night and picked up a few nice-to-haves.  First, they’ve never carried it before (that I’ve seen), but they had a few Chouffe selections on-hand.  I picked up the “Houblon Chouffe Dobbelen IPA Tripel”, sort of a tripel married to an IPA that sounds intriguing.  Also picked up a Fantôme Saison D’Erezée - Hiver (their “winter” offering from their seasonal line… this must be close to a year old at least!) and a Reissdorf Kölsch.  Also drank the Fuller’s London Porter last night, which was exemplary.  Now I’ve never really reviewed a beer, so don’t expect me to wax prosaic along the lines of “pours a dense black liquid beneath a fluffy brown cloud” cause I didn’t take notes or anything, just drank it and enjoyed it.  A very nice porter, indeed.

I also spent a couple hours cleaning up the basement around by brew section (something I’ve been meaning to do for a good long time), and it feels peachy to have done so.  Remember when I had the blowoff from the Belgian Golden?  Well, I had been shielding the carboy with an inverted carboy box, with a hole cut in the bottom for clearance of the airlock.  That box was dank and musty and covered with tried hops and trub and crap.  That box was also still in the corner, gathering a nice bit of mold (wild yeast anyone?).  Finally got rid of that thing.

Also dumped 11 bottles of the Weissbier (Scheisse Weisse) for being just nasty.  I still have a case, and I might let it sit a while to see if it settles out.  I tasted each one as I opened and dumped them.  A couple gushed, so either infected or over-carbonated.  Hopefully none of the remaining case will become bottle bombs.  One or two actually tasted OK, so maybe there is some hope.

The night before, I cracked into one of the Rye IPAs.  Now, I know it’s only been a couple days since I bottled, but there was pretty close to zero carbonation going on.  Did I maybe skimp on the priming solution?  I only used about 3/4 cup of corn sugar, rather than the whole 5oz (probably about 1 1/3 cups).  The bottle was also the last one from bottling, and was only about half full.  Could the extra head space in the bottle contribute to a lack of carbonation?  Maybe not as able to build up the pressure to force the CO2 back into solution?  I’m no chemist, so I just don’t know.  The beer tasted quite good, though.  I think I may have run the dry hops at the wrong point, though.  In the future, dry hop for the week prior to bottling, not the first week of seconday and then racking to tertiary for a couple more weeks.  Should preserve more aroma.