My lager is slowly driving me nuts. Like the lager drinking southern softies of the UK the damn thing needs to be mollycoddled. It has to ferment at a certain temperature. Then it has to secondary ferment at a different temperature. Then it has to lager at a different temperature again, by which time all the yeast has fallen out of solution. So when it's bottled you need to add more yeast else you don't get the in-bottle fermentation and hence no fizz. I've done my best but with no locals caves to keep the beer at the right temperature and no local monks to dedicate their lives to maintaining it, I'm not sure I've done a good job. You can only go so far with wet towels, ice and eskys, especially when you can't clip the lid on the esky because the containers don;t quite fit. I could get a fridge and mount a thermostat on it so it stays at a steady temperature, but that goes against the idea of brewing with the seasons and adds a degree of artificial control I don't like. Plus we don't have room and every time I bring it up Liz gives me a disbelieving look. To get that in I'd need to give up a bike, and lager just ain't worth it. Even if we could use it to mature cheese in too*.
Anyway - today I put on another brew - exactly the same ingredients and exactly the same procedures as the lager, but with ale yeast and with no temperature control, just the springtime weather conditions. No pictures this time - how many pots of bubbling brown stuff can you post on the web? - but it smells great. Will be interesting to spot the differences...
*Although it would mean we could make our own brie & camembert - now that's an angle worth trying....
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