CA Update

I'm sitting here sipping on a Bell's Hopslam (and loving it) and contemplating what's up with the Calibration Ale. We're 9 days into fermentation and it's not done yet. Today's specific gravity is 1.017, which is good, but I thought we would get here sooner.

 So, what happened?  Last Thursday, four days into fermentation, I noticed the temperature getting a little warm (71.5F). Well that's what glycol is for.  I set the controller so it would pull the fermenting beer down to 65F, which it did. When it got down to 65F the controller did what it  is supposed to do, which is stop the flow of chilled glycol. The problem was that the jacket around the fermenter was full of 27F glycol, and that proceeded to pull down the fermenting beer another 3F. That brought us down to 62F.

Now 62F is not a bad temperature to ferment a beer. The problem with it was that it dropped the temperature around 10F in about 10 minutes. That rate of temperature change will shock the yeast and seriously retard fermentation. When I noticed the abrupt drop in temperature, I shut down the refrigeration and hoped for the best. It took several days, but vigorous fermentation resumed and the beer is now attenuating nicely. That learning experience added about 4 days to primary fermentation, and perhaps years off my life.

The sample I took today smelled great. The Amarillo was not overpowering, but present just the same. I was worried that the beer would be under hopped since the gravity was higher than expected, but the bitterness was at a nice level. Which means that hop utilization is better than expected, and that's a good thing to know before you brew an Irish Red Ale (tomorrow's brew) which is known for restrained bitterness.