Yeah, yeah, yeast is not gendered. I’m calling them that because the Belle & Sebastian song “The Boy Done Wrong Again” is in my head.
(I never saw that video before looking it up just now — how gloomy — so no, that’s not a cry for help.)
Anyway… the IPA I bottled a couple of weeks ago has mellowed some, and the carbonation on it is just excellent, excellent. Okay, the head still isn’t staying long — well, maybe the ring around the top, but not a thick creamy head — but that’s okay. It tastes good, good enough to share. I’ll wait a week more to try another bottle of wheat.
In the meantime, I shifted the Coffee Stout again to the empty carboy, to see whether that would affect the ongoing fermentation. I don’t know whether it has yet, of course — the shift was enough to juggle things about, but I do see a small ring of bubbles around the top, very very tiny bubbles. (Don’t sing! Don’t sing it!)
Either way, I’ve gotten the beer off some trub and that’s worth it. It tastes even more coffee-like than before, which is okay because it’s still not horridly overpowering at the moment.
The carboy that is now empty will be put to use for the secondary fermentation of my squash ale, which may or may not have squash flavor after it’s done. (I will be putting in a spice tea into the secondary, though: cinnamon, nutmeg, a little clove, not sure what else.) It’s just soaking in bleach for the night, and I’ll rack it tomorrow morning before I go off and get some stuff done.
Tomorrow night? I start up some apple cider.
Awesomeness.
I wouldn’t worry too much about the head. Ales normally don’t have thick, long-lasting heads–that sort of head is generally reserved for stouts.
Looking forward to trying a bottle of the IPA… we’re already planning the menu for your visit(?) later this month.
Charles,
Yeah, I don’t want a super-big head on it. But I have had IPAs that had a little better head retention.
Anyway, the flavor should have mellowed and deepened in rich hues by the time we’re cracking open a bottle or two of the stuff. No idea whether I’ll be able to bring along my coffee stout, though — the bastard is, even now, still fermenting a little. Good grief, Charlie Brown!
(Though I have also realized that the amount of fermentation going on is so minimal that probably I could just go ahead and bottle it now… it probably won’t affect the final product, since after all I’ll be adding a significant amount more priming sugar to each bottle than is likely present in a bottle-sized sample of the beer right now. Still, exploding bottles are a scary idea,…
So I’m inclined to let it bubble away slowly just the same, till it’s done — rushing is never helpful for things like this. I may just have to leave a bottle with you, for you to age and condition for a while yourself.