Petite Saison d’Ete tasting and fermentation update

I know you’re supposed to let beer carbonate for 2+ weeks, but I couldn’t help myself.  I pulled a bottle (actually more like 4 or 5) out of the basement last week and stuck them in the fridge to chill.  7 days after bottling the beer seemed to be decently carbonated.  There wasn’t much head, but I’ve been having problems getting most beers to pour with a good, solid head in my glass.  We’ve stopped using jetdry, so maybe it’s still working itself out of the dishwasher.  Or maybe the detergent has some of the same chemicals in it… anyway, I don’t know if I can blame myself for the head retention based on my brewing process or my cleaning habits.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the beer smelled exactly like it did in the fermenter in the glass.  There was a crispness to the aroma that probably came from the combination of carbonation and refrigeration.  The color is somewhere around a 5 on the SRM chart, which is within the style guidelines and made me happy.

I went out and got a bottle of Saison Dupont to do a side-by-side tasting.  It wasn’t until this point that I realized just how under-carbonated my beer was.  The Dupont hit your mouth in an explosion of effervescence where as mine simply just sort of limped over your lips.  Hopefully this is simply a symptom of me opening the bottles too soon.  I preferred the aroma of my brew to Dupont’s which had an overtone of a dead skunk that had been sitting in the road a couple of days.  I don’t know if it had been mishandled or if that’s the way it was supposed to be as I’ve never had it before and the store that I usually get my beer from was out of stock or not carrying it and I had to go someplace new.  The smell didn’t carry over into the taste and I very much enjoyed the Dupont, though mine seemed to have a bit more grain character to it.

I’ve been purposefully vague about describing the taste of my beer as I’d like to see how it develops. I’ll put up some formal evaluation in a week or so.

In other news the Honey Coriander Wheat (that needs a better name) is still fermenting.  We’re on the 10th day of krausen.  It has definitely started to flocculate, but the bubbles are still pushing through the airlock about 10 times a minute.  I’ve scheduled to bottle on Sept. 10th which would give it 3 and a half weeks in primary.  I’m starting to think it might need a bit more- we’ll see.  The terrible smell I mentioned before is almost completely gone.