Beer Forum

Just bottled up 12 gallons of a thoroughly experimental beer. Well, to be truthful, all my beers are experiments. I never follow recipes, never do the same thing the exact same way twice running, and never keep notes. Not to put too fine a point on but - - - there's not much point in all the scrupulous attention to repetitive effort unless one is trying to brew beer the way Micky'Dee's makes hamburgers and getting an exact clone of the one before is where the brewer truly wants to go or he's into competitions. I prefer the variety of the unscrupulous process.

Anyway, I friggin digress.

This batch was unique for me because it was brewed in two batches one right the hell after the other. The first one I got all carried away with the Soraichi Ace and a couple other high acid hops. Then I tasted the wort it was BITTER. So I made a second batch with no high acid hops.

It tasted pretty good going into the bottle. I have very high hopes.


Once, I made a brutally bitter beer, had a few, and set it aside to age. In three months it was marvelous. The beer gnomes can be your friend.

I brewed an Imperial stout a year ago and boiled it too long due to an interruption during the brew day. It was way too bitter so I added some oak cubes and it is still sitting in the closet waiting for something to blend with. I call it my "vat". Some defects can be corrected and some cannot. Too bitter can be corrected. Infected, not so much.