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| Rushed Rye Pale Ale... |
The most important step in homebrewing is being patient and not rushing things. Beer-making is a process of harnessing mother nature in a very controlled and mechanical way. As homebrewers we come to understand how to clean things, mix things, heat things up, make sanitary transfers, and foster an ideal environment for fermentation. Eventually we develop an intuition about these things and have a great deal of control over each step of the process. For me, fermentation is one area in which I have to give up control and give mother nature the time she needs to get the job done.
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| Sparkling IPA (un-carbonated sample) |
I brewed a batch of Pale Ale a few weeks ago and, due to time constraints, had just 10 days to get the beer fermented, dry-hopped, and bottled. The result was 'just ok'. It was pretty yeasty, a bit over-carbed, and had a tinge of diacetyl. As hard as I tried to set up a recipe, yeast pitching rate, and fermentation temperature profile that would work within the ten-day window, it just wasn't enough time to get below 1.014.
My next batch, a Maris Otter IPA, had no such time constraint. I let it sit at 65ºF for 4 weeks before racking to secondary and dry-hopping. The sample was sparkling clear and had a perfectly clean and refined flavor, on par with some of my favorite commercial beers. Its now sitting in secondary on some amarillo hops.
