Getting my brew on

After a 7 month hiatus, I pulled my trusty brew pot out and got busy. Jill requested the dubbel from the "Complete Joy..." book, and I wanted to get a brown going. I made them over a few days when Jill was feeling OK. Everything seemed fine with the dubbel, but it stopped bubbling after only four days. You have to understand that the dubbel has about 12 tons of malt sugar in it, so I expected quite a lengthy fermentation. Nonetheless, I took a gravity reading at 10 days and found that it was pretty close to the target figure. I bottled it last night, and it tasted pretty amazing, even uncarbonated. This one is going to be special in a month or two.

The brown was more of an adventure. It failed to bubble at all, meaning that the yeast was no good. I discovered this on a Sunday, three days after brewing. Something should have happened. Our local homebrew supply is closed on Monday and Tuesday, and I didn't want to risk contamination by some wild fungus or bacteria, so I went across the street to the co-op and got a 750mL Trois Pistoles (my tasting notes here). It's bottle conditioned, so there's live yeast in the bottle. I sterilized the bottle and poured the whole thing into the wort. Four days later--bubbles! I bottled it a week ago, and I'm putting one in the fridge today. It smelled very nice when I bottled, and I'm hoping that it got a lot of character from the Unibroue yeast.

I've also bought the ingredients for the next batch, a dark wheat beer (Phat Fired Weizenbock, p.195 of "Complete Joy..."), so I hope to have three funky styles at the ready in time for the holidays.