Sequoia

When I heard a friend of mine had a root cellar in the basement of her apartment building, I knew I had to ferment a beer there. She measured the temperature and found it to be slightly above 14°C. Slightly too warm for a traditional lager, but perfect for a California common. I’m a big fan of the style, both the classical Anchor Steam and more modern and hoppy variants.

This was the first time I used my new 24 liter kettle during the brew, and right from the start I made a big mistake. I measured the mash temperature and got nervous because it was too low. I started heating it until I reached a good mashing temperature, but then (of course) it kept rising way above where I wanted it to be even though I had taken the kettle of the heat. It ended around 73°C and stayed there for most of the time. I tried cooling it by adding cold water, but there wasn’t enough room in the kettle. In hindsight, I should have done more. I was pretty sure the beer was ruined, but sometimes beer has an amazing ability to fix mistakes over time, so I decided to go ahead with it anyway.

I had to let the beer ferment longer than I wanted to (three weeks in total) because I got a bad mancold when I had originally planned to bottle it. The FG landed at 1.022 rather than the 1.018 I aimed at, leading to an ABV of 4.5% rather than 5.0%.

Driving the bucket full of wort to my friend and then back again was not ideal, and I probably won’t do that again. I wish I had a cellar of my own …

Tasting

The beer was too dark, and looked like a brown ale more than anything else. The beer was surprisingly also very flat, and remained so after several weeks on bottle. Perhaps I didn’t prime it with enough sugar, or the sorry state of the original wort ruined that aspect of the beer as well. The aftertaste was sweet and nutty in an unpleasant way. I couldn’t even finish a glass of it. I’ll file this under lessons learned and move on to the next batch …