Witty Ging Update

The Witty Ging bottles have been conditioning in the fridge for close to three weeks now since people say that some flavors can mellow out with more time. I decided to try another bottle last night and it was quite drinkable! The tart taste was still stronger than I would have liked, but it was still a huge improvement. I am going to give this recipe another shot for my next brew session. The cooler set up should keep the temperatures in check and the beer should turn out better.

Fusel Alcohols

Unfortunately, the Witty Ging is barely drinkable. It’s not completely terrible, but it’s not something I would want my friends to try either. The bad taste can be attributed to the major temperature swings during fermentation. The summer heat crept up pretty quickly and the fermenter was showing readings of warmer than 80 degrees. Anything over 80 degrees is way too high and it most likely led to fusel alcohols being produced. I now have a cooler that will help control temperatures and am going to try and brew the Witty Ging again. I have to find a mini-fridge big enough to fit two fermenters at once so I can get my pipeline back on track!

New Labels

New bottle labels! These are slightly different than one I made in Word a few months ago. My brother works for a printing company and he was able to get the labels designed and printed. The labels are 4" X 5" and almost wrap around the entire bottle. There is about a 2" gap of exposed bottle in the back which I think looks good. Hopefully the labels will stay on through a sanitation phase before they are filled.

Big Mistake

I noticed some mold growing around the lid of the fermenter when I went to take the final gravity reading on my Irish Red last night. I have been keeping the fermenter in a cooler and adding ice every day to maintain a constant temperature. I took off the lid to see what the beer looked like because I assumed it was contaminated. At the time, I saw what I thought was a big chunk of mold floating in the beer. I immediately brought the fermenter to the sink and starting pouring it out. It turns out it was just one of the hop sacks... (Ugh). The beer most likely was fine. I now know that most of the beer is salvageable even if there is mold actually in the fermenter.

I just put the first test bottles of the Pilothouse Pilsner and Witty Ging to the fridge. I only have a cooler big enough for one fermenter at a time, so the pipeline will be diminished after these two batches are done.