About a week ago, I racked my Golden Road Pro-Am Mystery Hop Beer (tentatively called Rule 34) to secondary. I also pulled one gallon out of the five into a smaller carboy and dry-hopped with 3/4 ounce of the mystery hop, just to see how that would taste. The competition instructions encouraged us to feature the hops, and I thought that was a worthy experiment.
This morning, while preparing to bottle both brews, I discovered what looked like an ugly infection on the surface of the large carboy:
Gross.
It looks pretty nasty, and I had a big old sad.
Luckily, the dry-hopped gallon is fine and healthy, so I think that’s what I’ll submit into the contest.
But here’s the thing: I popped the airlock out of the carboy and took a big smell (Thinly rolling for a Smell Check and getting a critical success). It didn’t smell sour or gross or off at all. Intrigued, I pulled a few ounces into a glass (using massively sanitized equipment, of course) and tasted it. It didn’t taste weird to me at all, so I asked Anne to taste it, and she also thought it tasted fine.
So I suppose it’s possible that what I thought was an infection is actually something yeasty that looks bad (there is a big, ugly whitish bubble on top, which is what really makes me nervous) but isn’t a problem. If it is infected, I’m worried about bottle bombs, so I decided to keg that four-ish gallons and let it naturally carbonate right up until it’s time to submit my bottles. I’ll use my beer gun to bottle some, and then make a decision about submitting the dry-hopped version or this one. At the very least, I’ll submit the dry-hopped version and hope for the best.
And if the infected(?) batch is drinkable, I’m calling it Patient Zero Pale Ale.
Smashing Pumpkin Ale
Bronze Dragon Brown Ale
Going To California Pale Ale
#VandalEyesPA
Surly Cynic Ale