Backlog: St. Sebastian's Belgian Ale

St. Sebastian's Belgian Ale

I got started on my next beer toward the end of January, for an important reason. My wife and I were expecting our first child at the beginning of March, and I wanted to brew something to celebrate. We had already settled on naming him "Sebastian" (although we were keeping that a secret), and it seemed like a name that would fit perfectly on a Belgian ale. So that's what I decided to do.

Ingredients:

9.9 lbs light malt extract
1/2 oz kent golding hops
3/4 oz styrian golding hops
1/2 lb dark Belgian candy sugar
1 tbsp coriander seeds
Belgian ale yeast

This was another easy brew. Without specialty grains to steep, it was fast and simple -- although a few things went wrong, which I'll get to.

Boiled 2 gallons water, added malt extract, candy sugar, Kent golding hops, and coriander seeds (un-crushed). Boiled for 60 minutes.

At 60 minutes, removed from heat and added Styrian golding hops to steep for 15 minutes. After 15 minutes, began process of cooling wort and combining with cold water in fermenter.

This time, I did strain the wort on its way into the fermenter, and I was glad I did. It caught a lot of leftovers from the boil, and the resulting beer would be much clearer than past batches.

Okay, so two things happened here that weren't great. The first is that, somehow, I ended up with too much wort. I guess the boil didn't evaporate as much as I should have expected, or I poured too much water into the fermenter. Whatever the reason, it was full to almost 6 gallons instead of the expected 5 gallons. When my starting gravity came in a bit low, 1.060 to the expected 1.070, I figured that was the reason why.

The other thing that I was concerned about was the yeast. I got dry yeast this time around, and noticed that the expiration date on the package was about six months earlier. I was a little concerned but forged ahead anyway.  

Two weeks later I racked to a secondary fermenter, which I don't think was strictly necessary for this beer. It smelled terrific, though -- hints of banana and citrus, definitely in line with what I would expect for the style. The gravity read higher than target, 1.020, but given the style and the starting gravity, I figured it just needed more time.

10 days later, the gravity hadn't changed. Still 1.020.

4 days after that, same thing. Apparently it was done, despite the recipe target being 1.014-1.010. I went ahead and bottled.

A month later, we had a son, but the beer still wasn't ready. It was severely undercarbonated. If I was lucky it would form a bit of a head upon pouring, but there was no retention. It disappeared within seconds. The beer tasted great, with estery notes of banana and tropical fruit, and low bitterness. But the lack of carbonation and unfermented sugars left something to be desired.

I'm not sure what to blame, exactly. The yeast was past its expiration date. I had not made a starter, either. There was almost 20% too much water in the wort. And my basement floor in wintertime was probably cooler than the recommended temperature for a Belgian strain. Probably it was all of these things working in concert. It was a shame, because with full fermentation this might have been the best beer yet.

A few months later, it had actually improved a bit, so impatience may also have been to blame. Even so, months later I can't help but feel like this was a frustrating miss.