Christmas Ginger Ale AND Problems In The Brew House

Christmas Ginger Ale

So just quickly, I made a Ginger Ale for Christmas. It was meant to impress the hell out of the inlaws and the heavens were supposed to open and a new crown bestowed upon my head. However for a bunch of reasons none of this happened and instead I ended up with a few polite smiles and a lots of undrunk beer (ahhh 15 longnecks). And you know what? I don’t blame them, the beer was nothing like I intended and despite a megatonne of fresh ginger added to both the boil and the fermenter, the beer tasted more of honey than ginger. I added more than twice what the recipe called for but that didn’t seem to make a difference. The finished beer was beautiful and clear and straw in colour but I ended up having to add wedges of lemon to it in order to give it a bit of flavour.

So what went wrong? My best guess is that I used White Labs California Ale Yeast (WLP001) and it did too good of a job. It’s an epic yeast that is super efficient, leaves not much yeast character at all and I figure it just ate all the ginger flavour up! Here is a picture and the recipe I used, just for interests sake -

Brew House Troubles!

My last few beers have been a bit crap. I’m very careful with my process and sanitation, I’m reading new books all the time, forums every day, The Brewing Network podcasts every day. I feel like I’m doing everything I can to knowledge myself up however I’m still making beers that aren’t even just average. Some of them are straight up terrible (I even had to dump a batch a few months back!). One of the problems I have is that I started brewing only 6 months ago and built myself up to my current level really fast. I didn’t slowly add equipment or casually improve process, I dived straight in the deep end so it’s really hard to know where to start trouble shooting. Boil? Fermentation? Recipe? Sanitation? Personal hygiene?

I’ve got a pretty good feeling it’s either in my boil or in fermentation. With respect to the boil, I’m still doing it on an electric stove top. I have a 35l pot and I really have trouble getting a vigorous boil going without taking the lid on and off the pot. Ideally your boil should be open and vigorous so as to boil off any unwanted nasties before fermentation. If you can’t achieve this you end up with off flavours and clarity issues. This problem I can do something about. All I need is a new burner and to move my operation outside. Not too much extra equipment and not much extra money. The other potential problem might be coming from fermentation. I can’t exactly control my fermentation temperature although I have a spot in my house that only fluctuates between about 18C and 24C and the swings are rarely that big. Usually they’re no more than 3C over a 72 hour period. This I can’t do anything about. I live in a one bedroom apartment with a patient (albeit unreliably patient) wife and there just isn’t room for a bigger fermentation system. To control temperature I’d need a fridge, a temperature controller and a place to put the two. So all I can really fool around with is the boil, sanitation and recipe formulation. I just hope I can improve the beer by changing the boil process.

The Experiment

It occurred to me that I might be able to test my fermentation conditions by using a fresh wort kit from Dave’s Homebrew. That way I can test fermentation conditions with a professionally made wort. If my beer still tastes like crap then I know it’s fermentation and I may as well quit. If it turns out alright, then it’s most likely the boil and I just need to buy a 3 or 4 ring camp burner. Note: I’ve taken extreme care to sanitise everything to absolute extreme so I can be sure fermentation is controlled and any off flavours aren’t caused by contamination.

Here is the fresh wort cooking away. I will report back once it’s all done.