Boont Amber in the Primary and IPA Tasting Notes

Hello beer lovers! Welcome back. It's been a couple weeks since my last post and we have some new developments. Our Orange Peel Pale Ale, which was the focus of the previous post, has been in the secondary fermenter for two weeks and we are planning to bottle it tomorrow afternoon!

Boont Amer Ale in Primary Fermenter

The results from the last poll came in and the Boont Amber Ale clone was the winner! We brewed last Saturday and it went incredibly well. The beer is in the primary fermenter right now and has been bubbling away all week.

This beer called for California Ale yeast (by White Labs, if anyone is curious). This ale yeast is significantly different from the other yeasts we have used so far in terms of what is called 'flocculation'. Flocculation is how well the yeast clumps together while active. A yeast with high flocculation will have large clumps of yeast actively moving through the water column while a yeast with low flocculation will have very tiny clumps of yeast in motion. The California Ale yeast we used for the Boont clone has medium flocculation while the majority of beers we've brewed use yeasts with high flocculation. While this has little effect on how the beer tastes, it looks very different while fermenting. We will also probably transfer this beer into a secondary fermenter tomorrow or perhaps Sunday, depending on hydrometer readings and yeast activity.

We cracked the first few bottles of our somewhat-botched Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA clone this week, as well. If you remember from my post on bottling, we used the wrong carboy and wound up with only 30-some bottles of this beer. I was worried that the huge amount of head space in the secondary fermenter would lead to oxidation and off flavors in the final beer. I was also concerned that the heat wave we had a couple weeks ago would affect the yeast. Fortunately, it seems neither of these concerns were founded and the beer tastes great!

Unfortunately, there is one major issue with it. Notice how large of a foam head the beer pictured has. Because of the odd size of our batch (somewhat less than 3.5 gallons), we had to estimate the quantity of corn sugar to use in the bottle conditioning. It seems we overestimated the quantity necessary and all of our bottles are over-carbonated. When opened, a few have erupted with foam, leaving only a few sips in the bottle to pour. Others create such a large head when poured that it takes a few gulps just to get to the beer. A few have turned out just fine, albeit somewhat fizzy for my taste.

The beer has a big, very fresh hop aroma. It is a little bit sweet with spicy, piney notes and BIG BOLD hop bitterness. Despite the bitterness, it has a surprisingly smooth finish with a bit of an alcohol burn due to it's high alcohol content and possibly from the temperatures during the last week in the secondary. It has a rich, caramel amber color and decent clarity, which is usually made cloudy from the over-carbonation disturbing the small yeast cake at the bottom of the bottle upon un-capping. Overall, definitely a beer I would make again!

Thanks for reading, friends! Don't forget to vote for what we should brew next near the top of the page on the right-hand side of the page! Until next time!

Pale Ale Update and Racking to a Secondary Fermenter

Hello again, beer lovers!

So due to some unfortunate computer issues, I was unable to post the updates I wanted to all week on the fermentation process of our Orange Peel Pale Ale. Instead, I've got a few pictures of what happened this week and some information on racking our beer to a secondary fermenter.

This was taken about 24 hours after the brewing finished. Notice the thick layer of krausen on top of the beer and how uniformly cloudy the beer is. The beer is cloudy because there is a ton of yeast floating in suspension, absorbing sugars and processing them into carbon dioxide and alcohol. The krausen on top is composed of proteins from the malts, insoluble acids and oils, hop resins, and yeast cells. At this point, the airlock was bubbling vigorously, twice a second or so.

We had a mini heat wave here in the Bay Area early this week with temperatures getting into the high low 90s on Wednesday. As a result, our house was a bit warmer than we would have liked and I think the fermentation finished faster than usual. So by Thursday afternoon, there was very little action in the airlock. A hydrometer reading yesterday confirmed that it was time to rack to the secondary fermenter.

This was taken this morning, right before we began racking. The krausen has fallen completely, its components settling out on the bottom along with dead yeast cells and anything else that was suspended in the beer. This layer is visible at the bottom of the carboy as the whitish-grey junk and is referred to as 'trub'. Once the vigorous primary fermentation is complete, continued contact with the trub can impart undesirable flavors to the beer so may brewers move the beer off of the trub and into a secondary fermenter by siphoning. This process is called 'racking'.

Here is the larger primary fermenter, filled with beer, and the smaller (5-gallon) secondary fermenter. Using the auto-siphon, we transfer the beer from the primary to the secondary, avoiding sucking up any of the solids at the bottom of the carboy.

Beer Starts to Flow

Our Orange Peel Pale Ale, like most California pale ales, wants to have a crisp, hoppy aroma when when you crack a bottle open. This is accomplished by adding some hops into the secondary fermenter. This is called 'dry-hopping' because the hops have not been boiled. Hops have natural anti-bacterial properties so there is no worry of infecting the beer through this addition. The nylon mesh bag was sterilized prior to use, however. Inside, we put 1/2 oz. Cascade hop pellets. The beer will absorb many of the delicate alpha acids that contain that wonderful aroma over the next 10-12 days before bottling.

We filled the secondary fermenter almost the way up, leaving very little head room for oxygen to damage the beer. This is the best we've done yet at getting the volume in the primary to match the volume of the secondary. This has probably been our most successful brew, apart from the uncontrollably warm weather during the primary fermentation.

The beer will sit for 10-12 days, allowing for the yeast to clean up some of its early-fermentation by-products and for more suspended particulate matter to settle out.

Thanks for reading and cheers!