Sometimes you give up too early. I’ve written about beers that didn’t work when I thought they would be great, and others that rose from the ashes to be wonderful. Last night I went out to the beer fridge int he garage through cold rainy darkness. A fire crackled and dinner was warming. The question, The Question, that has beguiled men and women for millennia echoed in my head: “What to drink?” I have much of my Solstice Stout, a dwindling number of Marlborough IPAs, and various other one-offs that I can’t bear to finish. Then there was the Harvest Ale from the link above, a well-conceived and tasty autumn beer with rich malts and spices which, confusingly, never carbonated even with a second dose of yeast and sugar. An epic flop. Now, three months on, I’d given it up for dead , the last bottle of a failed line. So I picked it up with a second beer, thinking I’d take a taste of the flat beer, dump it down the drain, then pour a second “real” beer. I opened the swing cap to be greeted by a healthy pop of CO2 from the bottle. Hmm! When I poured it into a glass it was clear bright copper with spirited streams of bubbles and a foamy cap. What’s this, Bottsford?
I took a taste and was…delighted. This was the Harvest Ale I set out to brew back in September and now, a quarter-year later it was ready. Rich spices of clove and ginger, a semi-sweet malty backbone, and earthy rich base notes all riding on a crest of effervescent foam. I saved a bit for my wife, carefully decanted into her wee adorable 4 oz tasting glass.
Just look at that color and clarity! Finally the beer was ready and…it was gone. That was the last bottle, the twist ending on what seemed like a brewing failure. The moral of the story, kiddos? Never give up on a beer. It’s a live culture you’re creating from the moment you pitch the yeast to the moment you pee it out, it’s alive and doing its own thing. Learn from Uncle F#*k-Up: if a beer is bad, let it sit for a few months and try again. All you’ve lost is a little storage space but you might gain a fantastic beer. Sometimes it gets worse with some time, but sometimes it becomes sublime.
Writer, architect, father, husband.