Tried a cheeky glass of the Irish Stout just now, and it’s disappointingly twangy. Wonder if another couple of weeks will improve things, or if this one’s destined to be chucked out in order to free up the keg?
I also wonder where that twang comes from. Oxidation should be minimal, I’ve not used any plastic equipment, and the beer has been conditioning with CO2, not priming sugar. So what gives? No idea. The carbonation at least is about right for a stout in terms of mouth feel, though there’s no frothy head. Might tweak it up a bit if there’s still some in the keg by the time I put the next brew of CO2.
I’m switching the Irish Stout kit beer from CO2 onto Beer Gas (60/40) because I also need to put on a traditional English bitter that’s been liberated from somewhere else, and doesn’t want any carbonation. This means that the stout will have been on CO2 at 15 PSI for 6 days now, and although I haven’t tried it yet I reckon it’ll be about right. Will give it a taste when I run out of Yeti imperial stout, finish the two 5 litre kegs of stolen bitter, or fit a fourth tap. Watch this space …
Very quick & dirty way of putting this to bed; open-vessel transfer resulting in several disconnect swap-outs as they became clogged with hops, ending with me just holding the silicone hose from the FV tap and dispensing into the open keg while trying not to splash too much. Oh well, at least we’re at 4.1% ABV now, pretty much like the real stuff. Putting it on CO2 in the chiller at 15 PSI, checking back in a week.
Fermentation seems to have all but finished now, so I added the 20g bag of anonymous hop pellets which came with the kit. The top of the brew looks clear, and there’s only slight signs of Krausen having touched the inside of the lid – can’t have been exactly fierce then. Hopefully adding the hops will kick-start things again so that there’s no too much oxidation.
Nothing much to report here; added syrup from sachet to sanitised SS Brewtech bucket, poured in 3 litres of water and 1.2 kg of Mangrove Jack’s LME, gave it a good stir before topping up to 23 litres with cold water. This only took it down to 25℃ so I threw in the blue Tilt Pro and set the fermentation fridge for 20℃, which it hit an hour or two later so I added M42 yeast and shut the door.
