Happy Brew Year!

It has been almost a year since I brewed my first batch of beer. Since then, I have brewed up quite a few batches of beer. Eight is the number that jumps to mind, but give or take one or two. I thought I was pretty successful until my IPA came up in September. It was good tasting but didn't have the buzz effect that I expect from an IPA. That, and it was quite foamy.

I have some theories as to the reason it got so foamy that I poured out the last eighteen bottles. First was the fact that I brewed it late in the summer when it was hot outside, and thus also warm inside. I put ice packs an a water bath which it sat in for three weeks while fermenting, but I may have missed a day or two. I am thinking that the yeast died off before it was supposed to, leaving a high sugar content which gave the excessive carbonation. The first few bottles had been quite good, but as I drank the beers over a few weeks, it got to the point that as soon as I opened the bottles, they would foam up like bubble bath.

Excessive foaming happened to me once before. My pale ale from last spring, as detailed in a previous post, was like that. I surmised the bottling sugar was the culprit, and so I cut back on the amount in the next two batches. That ale was quite good to drink, in spite of the foaminess. I have considered bacterial contamination, but the fact that the beers tasted pretty good and not vinegary, leads me away from that conclusion.

I have held back from brewing for a few months. Just this weekend, I started a batch of Red Irish Ale. It is a mixture of light amber malt extract, with a sack of grains that made a very dark wort. This was also the first time I tried liquid yeast, and I must say it is already shaping up nicely. Within twelve hours it was swirling in bubbling in the carboy. It is 36 hours later, and the bubbling has slowed somewhat. The color is also a bit lighter than when I first transferred it to the carboy.

This will be the last brew of 2010 and the first of 2011. Happy Brew Year!