Monthly Archives: September 2012

A Tale of Two Beers

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I opened a couple of bottles of Westy 8 last night, from my stash lovingly schlepped all the way home from Belgium.  And the first thing I noticed was that one of them had the expected creamy white head, while the other one was decidedly tan.  Possibly even beige.  But I went ahead with them anyway, giving Wind the better glass.

Turns out I was right to be suspicious.  Her glass was just the same as we had it back in Belgium.  Malty, rich, earthy, and spicy.  But my glass was still malty, but all the spiciness was gone and replaced by a kind of smooth creaminess.  It wasn’t terrible (I’ve had truly spoiled beers, like some Rochefort 10 that was a drainpour).  But it definitely wasn’t the same beer, by a long shot.

When I came back to the kitchen, I noticed the little ring of brown under the seal in my bottle’s cap.  So I guess there was some spoilage along the way.  All of the beer has had the same life — in my trunk on the way home, in our cellar in the Netherlands, in our baggage on the flight back to the US, in our winebeer fridge since we’ve been home.  So I don’t think we did anything to one bottle that we didn’t do to the other.  So it’s probably just the vagaries of living beer.

Fun With Refractometer

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A refractometer was on my list of shiny brewing equipment I might get.  And with my hydrometer in shards, I figured now was the time to try it out.  Amazon had a ton of options, many reasonably priced, and so one arrived at our doorstep in a few days.

I was excited about using a refractometer to do gravity readings, because I’d read about it being more precise, using a tiny sample, and not having to do temperature corrections (the tiny sample makes the temperature insignificant compared to the refractometer temp.).  However, I quickly learned two things:

1. You don’t have to do temperature corrections.  But once fermentation starts, you have to do some pretty complicated math based on the original gravity.  So I still need a computer to do gravity readings once fermentation starts.

2. While in theory the display is supposed to be very precise (it’s supposed to look something like this):

In practice, it looks more like this:

So I’m not sure it’s actually any more precise.  Still, the sample size really is just a few drops, and I’m looking forward to the next brew where I can do gravity readings with hot wort and not have to use a computer to do temperature corrections.