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Archive for July, 2008
Be Patient and the Rewards Will Come
Author: annie
Well in keeping with the thread of beer making in the last few posts I broach a really tough subject this post and that is the waiting. And when it comes to brewing your own beer, maybe the most difficult step of them all is the fermentation and aging process.
But you also know that if you break in and interrupt the process too soon, the beer you drink will be unsatisfactory and not nearly as rich and flavorful as how it will be when the aging process is done. If you went that route, you would eventually end up with a lot of beer in various stages of fermentation and aging and you would have to date and mark the storage bottles so you know which beer is ready to use and which needs more time to reach maturity.
And when you consider that an average minimum size of a home beer brewing cycle results in five gallons of beer, that can mean you will have a lot of finished beer around unless you have a big audience of beer drinkers to help you drink up the stuff. The time between when beer is bottled after the brewing process is complete until it is ready to taste can be anywhere from six weeks to six months if you include both fermentation and aging.
As opposed to perhaps your impression before you became a home brewer, you will not store the beer in the refrigerator during this phase because colder temperatures actually stop the fermentation process. So take my advise and do it right and just wait until it is all done and then the process will be all the more satisfying. Besides after the first batch is done and you have honed your skills and you know about how much you and your friends will drink you can have a steady flow of available beer ready for consumption.
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