Sometimes things go wrong

Well, Dan and I have been brewing for over a year now. For the most part we've been pretty happy with the things we've made. Still, the bottom line is we don't know what we're doing all the time and sometimes things go wrong. Although to be fair, Dan had absolutely nothing to do with this batch, so I'm the one who went wrong. I'm going to blame this failure on lack of planning. I put this recipe together while I was ordering ingredients for another recipe, so I had no time to really think about what I was doing. Not that excuses matter.

The thought I had when I was doing this was to make an Irish red ale that would be easy to drink and lighter, with a subtle smokiness. What I got was completely different.

The beer has a really odd smell to start. It's dark fruit & apple, and reminds me of a lot of the darker Belgian beers we've had. There are some chocolate notes, very much in the background, but more prominent was a bit of a solvent note.

The beer had no head at all when I poured it. There were a few bubbles but they disappeared almost immediately. The beer has a much darker color than I expected. It's a darkish brown, with a touch of red instead of a light brownish red.

The taste is fruity and decidedly Belgian again, with a smoky aftertaste in the mouth. I'm really not sure how Notty ended up being so fruity. There's also some estery flavors going on, the only thing I can think of was that the fermentation temp was high. There's really no hop flavor, and just a bit of chocolate as it warms up. Definitely not the caramel malt flavor I was going for.

In the mouth the beer has a decent level of carbonation, but the bubbles are very sharp. It's got a moderately light body, not really the lightest I've ever had but not terribly malty either. It's got no real substance to it. There's kind of an oily feeling in the mouth as well. I carbonated it towards the high end for the style at 2.5 volumes in a range of 2.1-2.6.

Overall it wasn't bad. It just wasn't what I wanted. I've spent a lot of time pointing out all the flaws, but really it still doesn't taste bad at all. I certainly haven't had a hard time drinking it. The problems are that the smoke isn't nearly as subtle as I had wanted, and it was supposed to be caramel flavored instead of fruity. The fermentation temps had to be high somehow.

The recipe was:

6lbs light dry extract

1lb pale malt

6oz roasted barley

4oz carared

4oz peat smoked malt

1.2 oz fuggles @ 60 minutes

.5 oz fuggles @ 30 minutes

.4 oz East Kent Goldings @ 30 minutes

1 oz East Kent Goldings @ 15 minutes

Mashed for 60 minutes at 152 in 3 quarts of water, fermented with a packet of dry Nottingham yeast.

If I had to do this again, I would have nixed the peat smoked malt entirely, or at least cut it down to 1 or 2 oz, thrown in a decent bit of caramel malt, either 60 or 40L, mashed at a higher temperature for more unfermentable sugars, and either cut the roasted barley down or removed it entirely.

At least it's clear. Live and learn.

- Adam