White Ale batch #7
Today was a nice stormy day brewing the fifth batch of the Johns Grocery Belgian White ale. We had some serious storms going just north of us. All we got was a cool breeze, which I was very thankful for, as it was pretty damn hot in the brewery, even though the thermometer only read 97 degrees!
This beer seems to be different everytime we make it. We will see how this batch comes out. We are using fresh WLP 400 yeast from White labs. The yeast got a little stressed out after batch number three, and the subsequent batches were very different. Batch number four had some clove like flavors going on, and batch numbers 5 and 6 have some serious belgian-esters going on (the batches we did for the beer club.)
Batch number three has become over carbonated in the bottles. This is because the beer did not quite finish all the way (and is the reason the yeast got so unhappy later on…) The funny thing is this is sort of traditional, as wheat beers in Europe are often very highly carbonated. To pour these beers, there are two methods, the ‘dirty’ pour, and the slow pour. The slow pour is to slowly pour the beer down the side of the glass, while tilting the glass to allow the beer to be minimally disturbed. The “dirty” bartender pour is the put the glass over the bottle, and then quickly invert them both. You then pull up the the bottle, always keeping the bottle opening just below the head on the beer. I demonstrated the latter pour today to Chris, and he was pretty impressed.
I was also concerned about the amount of sulfur in this batch of beer, but it is gone now. One of the benefits of having live yeast in the bottle is that the beer often changes after you bottle it. I guess the yeast reabsorbed the sulfur. I am quite relieved, as I have never detected H2S in my beer before. Oh what strange yeast strain this is!