First home brewing failure: failure to carbonate

In previous posts I had mentioned that the American Amber Ale I brewed several weeks back only bubbled for about three days, but still ended up as a very good tasting beer before bottling. The alcohol content was spot on so I know the yeast was present and doing its job. Last week marked the two week test from the bottling date.

The English Pale Ale came out wonderfully. Full of flavor, well carbonated... a very tasty finished product. The American Amber... well, it was flat, lifeless, like a pint of iced tea it was. Iced tea full of hoppy flavor. But no carbonation. So this becomes my first failure as a home brewer.

All is not lost though. Since the bottles are air-tight, there is still hope to salvage this fine brew. Here is what we are trying:

1. Pull a couple bottles out into a warmer place. It is possible that the environment was too cold and put the yeast to sleep. A little warmth will bring them back to life to feast on the priming sugar solution that was used (the same solution used in the English Pale).

2. Open the bottles and pour them in a keg. Force the carbonation with a gas system and drink from the keg. My problem with this is that I do not have a keg system, so will have to rely on Phil or Boone to have an empty for me to borrow AND keep the keg at one of their houses. I wouldn't trust either with a full keg of beer, but I guess that for storing five gallons, they would be entitled to their share.

3. Re-carbonate the bottles. We can always open the bottles, pour them back into a carboy, and start the carbonation and bottling process over again. This could be a chance to do another round of filtering.

We'll keep you updated as to which process we decide to go with.

- Tom.

Phil's all-grain cream ale

After the rapid bottling session on June 6, we turned around that afternoon to attempt a new, all-grain brewing system in Topeka. Phil wanted to try a new method, using computer software downloaded from Northern Brewer on a trial basis, and use his modified cooler as the mash tun. My participation was as the master note-taker. We'll try to get a synopsis up on the website at some point. The cooler worked like a charm, and we found some utensils that we should think about getting for the future. The brew itself, turned out to be very, very thick in the end. Hopefully all of the junk will settle and kegging the brew will take out a lot of that stuff.

- Tom.

English and American bottled just in time...

For the big World Cup opening round match. On June 6, Phil came over from Topeka for an intense bottling session, where in the span of two hours we managed to bottle one-hundred and two bottles of the two batches brewed a couple weeks back: the English Pale Ale and the American Amber Ale. Each of them looked very good (and similar) in the carboy, and both of them were extremely tasty after fermentation. Here's to hoping that they both carbonate well. We got forty-nine, twelve ounce bottles of each, two Grolsch bottles of each, and two ceramic flip-top Rouge bottles of each.

For as similar and tasty as these beers were... the World Cup match was quite bittersweet. The gents got the scoring started early to what looked like a win for the Brits, but a gaff by goalkeeper Green, evened the match. At the time I said, 'It would be a shame if that gaff proved to cost them the game, like a draw or a one goal victory.' How true those words proved to be.

Both batches will be ready to test and sample as of June 20, but will more than likely be ready to quaff after June 27. That's when we'll see who is better.

- Tom.