Krausen Rising

I forgot Summer Solstice again. Happens every year. There was a time when I would have been at a week-long Solstice festival, which makes it harder to forget. I didn’t remember until I read Scott’s latest entry.

But I was bottling last night. If that’s not a pagan celebration of life, then I don’t know what is. And on top of it, I cut myself at the beginning of the process, on a 22oz bottle I hadn’t noticed had its tip sheered off. So there was even a blood sacrifice.

Can I dedicate the bottling to Dionysus, after the fact? I think yes.

I bottled my I2PA tonight. Based off Russian River’s Pliny the Elder, but with the initial (and strange) mashed hop addition coming from my own Nugget harvest from a year and a half ago. I dried the hell out of those hops in the attic, then shoved them in an airtight, glass container and put them in the freezer. They stayed pretty fresh-smelling for almost two years. So I made them my whole hops addition.

I am very good at messing up. This manifested itself in several ways during the brewing of the I2PA, though from what I tasted tonight at the bottling, none of that mattered. The main mess-up was just after I pitched the yeast. I shoved the stopper all the way through, into the carboy. I figured that would either ruin the beer or make no difference, so I grabbed a different stopper and let fermentation begin. Fermentation commenced about 24 hours later, a long wait, but it’s a strong beer. The air lock’s burbling never reached the insane heights of my previous brews, but I think that’s because I moved the fermenter into the back room, the computer room, all the windows of which have been towelled, sheeted, or otherwise covered to allow me to clear a dungeon in Oblivion, mid-day, without having to mess with my gamma settings. So that room has a steady, nearly cave-like temperature.

Yeah, so, a week or so after brew night, I racked the Stopper Hopped Nugbuster into the secondary fermenter (from a 6.5 gallon carboy into a 5 gallon carboy). I tasted it during this racking, and it was delightful. Hoppy as hell, high alcohol content, sweet malt. As expected.

The next night I brewed the Tidal Whit, so named because it must be ready in time for Tidal Wave, the annual free metal festival in San Francisco. For this brew, I did my first mini-mash. It was a clusterfuck. First, the lady and I went to Lanesplitter in Oakland for some pizza and beer before the brew. We figured we be home no later than 7:00, as we were meeting at 5:30. As luck would have it, we ran into some friends and ended up drinking more beer (Jen drinking more Diet Coke) and getting home around 8:30. The brew commenced around 9:00. Jen crashed around 10:00, and I finished brewing around 2:00am. This was my first mini-mash, I was already half-drunk when we got home, and I drank two more 22oz bottles of strong beer during the brew. When I staggered out of bed to piss around 6:30am, I checked up on the fermenter, and found it was already bubbling. That’s the quickest fermentation I’ve ever seen. I pitched around 1:00am, it was bubbling less than six hours later.

I learned something from the Whit. As I watched it ferment, I feared the worst. There was a nasty cake of yeast around the top, long chunks drifting down from the cake, tendril-like, into the wort. It looked hellish and slimy. Yeast is always a base creature, but this looked to me exactly like I imagined a wild yeast infection would appear. I’ve been waiting at the edge of my seat for the past week, and finally today I racked the Whit, the first time I felt it was okay to sample it. Turns out, that nasty yeast cake is the infamous top fermenting yeast cake of yore. Belgian yeast is primitive and still not entirely domesticated. It left a crust in the fermenter that the I2PA didn’t. But it tastes fine. It’s a weak one - between 3.5% and 4.5% ABV - but it should be great ice cold with carbonation, exactly what I hoped for.

Next up, disappointment. Somehow, the beer you make always makes a change for the worst between bottling and drinking. I don’t know how it happens, but I am ready.

I experimented with brewing a few years ago, and came up with a couple near-successes. Both brews (a no-name American Brown and the Death Metal Stout) had a strange, plastic flavor that was never completely traced, but that I think came from the tubing I used. To top it off, my bottle cleaning method for the second batch was lacking in method, off in technique, crust-friendly, and the last of my Death Metal Stout left me feverish and ill for two days.

The fever was the final straw. I had pulled off a fairly decent, if a bit vinyl-reeking stout, only to be sickened by my inattention to detail. I didn’t brew for another year or so. Then, when some friends showed interest in the process, I bought some new tubing and started again. The first and only beer of my second brewing incarnation was the Cat Nut Brown, a Newcastlish beer that turned out fine, with no plastic flavor. It took about three weeks to come into its own, and then was a fine session beer for the week or so it lasted after that. For the next few months, I attended occasional brewing sessions at the aforementioned friends’ houses, helping (with four of us at a time, we each spent more time drinking than doing anything else, honestly). They’ve all continued for the last couple years, making better and better beer, while I’ve sat paralyzed, never sure when’s a good time, what to brew, or how to brew it.

Until two weeks ago, when I brewed the Stopper Hopped Nugbuster, a I2PA based on Russian River’s Pliny the Elder, but with the first hop infusion being nugget hops harvested from my own back yard. It’s all extract, minus some specialty grains, and it’s sitting in the secondary fermenter, looking delicious. This thursday I plan to brew the Tidal Whit, a Belgian-style whit from a kit at Beer, Beer, and More Beer in Concord, to be ready by Tidal Wave.

I wanted to tell the story of the brewing of the Stopper Hopped Nugbuster, but I need my brewing journal to give a proper reckoning, including all the fuck-ups. If the SHN I2PA turns out good, I will be stoked.