Never Give Up

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?

Final Harvest Ale

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.

Clear Harvest Ale

 

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.

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