Patience Is a Virtue: A Homebrewing Lesson in Listening--and Hearing--Your Peers

I have a lot to catch up on in this blog, including reports on my great beer trips to Montreal, Philly Beer Week and New York City this year. But first, a homebrewing success story.

Even as a new brewer, you've already undoubtedly had experiences when you wondered if you totally screwed up your beer. (Does the panicked exclamation, "It's been 24 hours since I pitched my yeast and the airlock on my fermenter still isn't bubbing!?" sound familiar?) And what's the advice you always hear in response? "Relax, don't worry, and have a homebrew." Right? Or, "Beer is very forgiving," or something along those lines. Whether it's homebrew guru Charlie Papazian in the book that lit the fire in me, The Complete Joy of Homebrewing, or a helpful stranger on the homebrewtalk.com forum, the mantra is always that patience is a virtue in homebrewing.

The thing is, that advice hadn't really paid off for me in my first two years of homebrewing. (Quick aside: June 7, 2010 marked my two-year homebrewing anniversary. Seems longer.) Sure, I'd seen firsthand how forgiving beer can be amid fluctuating fermentation temps and questionable chilling techniques, but I'd never had a beer essentially cure itself of off-flavors over time. I'd heard about it happening, but as far as I was concerned it was just a brewing myth.

Well, I'm a believer. My most recent batch of beer--an all-grain Rogue Dead Guy ale clone from the book Beer Captured--emerged from fermentation tasting very alcoholic or solventy. I presume this was a factor of me accidentally mashing at too low of a temp (low to mid-140s F) and creating a highly fermentable wort with less body. I thought I must be tasting the so-called fusel alcohols notorious for headaches and hangovers and that supposedly don't mellow in homebrew over time. It was so strong that I almost poured the batch out right then. No joke. I never took a final gravity reading and I stopped taking notes on the batch.

But the ubiquitous patience advice--mixed with the fact that I didn't really have time to deal with the beer right then--convinced me to let it sit in its secondary fermentation vessel (a 5-gallon Better Bottle carboy) for a while. Roughly six weeks, in fact. Which brings us to last weekend... the moment of truth for this batch. Well, as you can guess by now, I sampled the beer and that solventy taste had subsided to reveal a fine tasting beer. I'm currently keg carbonating what is quite likely my best batch yet.

So let me add my voice to the many that have said so before me: If you're ever on the fence about an in-progress homebrew batch, give it some time. Chances are you'll be glad you did. I've seen it happen.