Missing Your Target Doesn't Equate Failure...

...At least in brewing. This is probably true for most efforts, but in this case, let's just focus on beer. As I said earlier, our Banana Nut Brown surely did not come out "bananaey," nor did it come out all that nutty. Further, it was pretty dark and maybe a bit thin on body. So, what we initially intended to brew did not necessarily come out in the end. However, it has received consistently positive remarks from objective tasters. Even I think it's good. And if anyone is going to be critical of his own creation, it is I. Plus, most people were pleased the beer did not have a strong banana taste, although they may have been curious about the possibility. So, it was a success. Here are a few pictures of the final product and the brewer who created it!










As for my barleywine, that too was quite an adventure. I was pretty confident with my plan and the recipe I had developed. After having an all-grain brewing session under my belt, I felt confident about the process, too. The brewing day did not go smoothly, though. I won't go into the whole day. Long story short, my initial mash temperature was too high, so I needed to spend time cooling it down, otherwise I wouldn't get proper conversions of starches to sugars. Then I didn't get a great extraction from the mash and then ended up gathering too much liquid to boil. So I did a 2 hour boil (for a second I thought I was Sam Calagione brewing his 120 minute IPA) so more liquid would evaporate. My first addition of hops (which were in the boil for the full 120 min.) were a crap shoot. These were a random mishmash of old hops given to me by the tour guide at the Redhook Brewery in Portsmouth, NH. He explained that these hops, although old, could be used just as well as bittering hops, but not aroma hops. And since he was offering me several ounces, I took them happily. Anyways, so I didn't know exactly what hops I was using, didn't know how old they were, and didn't even use a scale to measure how much I was using. So, let's just assume I used 2.5 oz of regular 'strength' bittering hops. The rest of the brew day was fine, but after nearly 7 or 8 hours of brewing (by myself!), I was pretty exhausted and frustrated. I was definitely not identifying with the idea of "relax, don't worry." I did have a homebrew, so at least I got that part right. To top it off, my beer got off to a very healthy, fast, vigorous fermentation, which is ideal for the quality of the beer. However, this also means one thing: beer volcano!! When the beer ferments, CO2 and all that nasty stuff that is bubbling at the top of the fermenter rush upwards until the only place to go is OUT! The beer spewed all over the laundry room, causing quite a mess. [It looks like the picture here, although this is not mine.] Apart from the pain of cleaning this up (actually, my roommate graciously cleaned most of it), I was pretty happy, because it meant at least the beer would be healthy. At this point, my barleywine is conditioning in the secondary fermenter doing quite well. I tasted it during the transfer, and it is actually good. It's going to be about 7.5-8% abv, which is fine, although I hoped for a bit higher. I'm considering letting it rest in there for a while, although it'd be fun to have ready for Christmas. I've also toyed with the idea of adding something to the fermenter to give it an interesting flavor, like raisins, or oak chips, or vanilla, or something like that. Maybe Chipotles. Those things are in everything these days, which is a HUGE pet peeve of mine. Who knows though, maybe they'll find their way into my Barleywine!