Beer!

For those of you keeping score at home, back on August 25 I started fermenting a batch of beer. The liquid extract kit I used was Cooper's Dark Ale (which I'd never tried before--breaking away from my nut brown ale comfort zone some) and half of the added sugars were dark toasted malt. Once the overwhelming foaming fermentation settled down, I added enough honey to make up the balance of adjunct sugars. The beer settled down and went on fermenting steadily. And kept on. And kept on. Fermentation slowed down greatly, but absolutely, positively, would. Not. Stop.

Normally, in my experience with homebrew beer, the little yeasties exhaust all the sugars within two weeks. You then prime and bottle, and the resulting brew is drinkable in another week or so. This stuff kept on for more than six weeks! It actually stopped fermenting in the middle of last week, but it took until last night for me to find the time to bottle the stuff up.

I'm wondering if it really was the honey that turned the fermentation into such a long, drawn-out affair. Mead takes a while to ferment, yes, but that's pure honey in an environment that isn't all that hospitable to yeast. With the beer, the honey made up a relatively modest share of the fermentable sugars, so I'm not so sure. And I'm also somewhat concerned about the taste of the beer if it's not aged a long while, as mead has a nasty, medicinal flavor if drunk "early." This is all unexplored territory for me, folks. I'll pop open a bottle in a couple of weeks and let you know what I find.

In the meanwhile, who else has discovered the wonderful Shiner Black Lager? It's become my second favorite commercial beer behind New Belgian's 1554: Enlightenment Black Ale (fear not, the venerable Shiner Bock is still a reliable standby).

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Honey and beer

Well, the foaming of the wort finally subsided, and the fermentation settled into a steady bubbling. This was my cue to prep the honey. I took a couple cups of water and heated them in a pot, then added the pound of raw honey, stirring until it'd pretty much dissolved. I took a taste, and let me tell you, there's no doubt that this is a honey mix. Other than the texture, it tasted exactly like the honey before I diluted it. Happily, I opened the fermenter and poured the sweet mixture in. It foamed up instantly, but not enough to reach the airlock. I closed the lid back up and it's been bubbling steadily for the last couple of days. It's slowing down now, but I probably won't be able to bottle until next weekend. We'll see.

In other beer news, we went to Central Market to stock up on some luxury consumables (and wine) and while there I took the opportunity to grab a six pack of New Belgian Brewery's wonderful 1554 Enlightenment Black Ale. Bruce Sterling introduced me to the thick, chocolaty beverage some years back at a Turkey City event, and I've had a passion for it ever since. I almost didn't get it, though, because my eye was caught by Tommyknocker Maple Nut Brown Ale. Anyone who knows me knows I love nut brown ale, and this sorely tempted me. But I really, really wanted the heavier punch of the 1554, so I put Tommyknocker on my wish list for next time. I did, however, indulge myself with a bottle of Bar Harbor Blueberry Ale from the singles section. I'd tried to homebrew blueberry ale in the past and failed to get a respectable blueberry flavor in my beer (fingers are crossed for my mead). But this Bar Harbor drink did a pretty darn good job of turning the trick. Nice blueberry aroma, and a nice blueberry flavor once you get past the initial hoppyness. I'm not a huge hops fan, but they came close to balancing everything just right. Next time I'll probably pick up some more. Have I mentioned how much I love the explosion of craft beers and microbreweries in the past decade?

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