Out in the Cold - Woodforde's Wherry

After plenty of recommendations on the Internet, Woodforde's Wherry was my next beer kit to brew up in time for Christmas.

It is described by Woodforde's as "Fresh and zesty with crisp floral flavours. A background of sweet malt and a hoppy ‘grapefruit’ bitter finish characterises this champion bitter". 

My usual approach to drinking is - mouth open - glug glug - yep that's nice - the end.

So taking a bit more notice of what I should be tasting, how to taste it and what to look out for was in order.  This sounded interesting, and more geared to the kind of drink I wanted to drink when I decided to start Homebrewing.  So why not throw it into the bucket to bubble away.

Which is where it stayed for seven days, in the garage, cuddled up to a brew belt during the night.
After seven days in the bucket I bottled it up using carbonation drops for conditioning and carbonating.

As I did with the Coopers Australian Lager, I left the bottles in the garage for two weeks.  Only, then it was summer, now its the end of November and 5 degrees celcius.  Newbie knowledge shining through.

FAIL.

I opened a bottle, expecting to taste the fruits of my labour, only to not hear the sound of gas escaping as I popped the cap off.  Disappointed. 
I thought, OK, so its not as lively as I would have expected, but maybe pouring and tasting would surprise me.

NOPE - flatter than water, thinner than Kate Middleton and duller than Nick Clegg. 

First thought was that it was a bad brew, and it was going to have to be thrown away.  I turned to my more experienced peers on Twitter and the Brew UK forum that I had been using as a great source of information.

Almost straight away my mind was put at rest.  I just needed to bring them into the house for two weeks to get it kick started.  Great, so there would be a bit of a delay, but as long as I didn't have to throw it down the drain I didn't care.

So after 10 days in the house, I put a couple of bottles into the fridge to see how it was going, and BOOM.....blummin' lovely.  The advice I got was spot on and it really did taste very nice. 

My only bit of disappointment was the amount of sediment in the bottles, it was quite a lot.

I'll be leaving future brews in the bucket for 10 - 14 days, to let it clear a bit more and reduce the sediment being transferred into the bottling bucket.

So after a bit of a hicup - and probably a valuable learning experience, I'm going to really enjoy this batch, having had to put a bit more work and tweaking to save it and make it right.

Really enjoying this and have put on a St Peter's Ruby Red Ale on a few days ago.  Ready to drink on New Years Eve - perfect.

2012 will see me move to the next stage.  I've bought the recipe ingredients for Way to Amarillo IPA  - looking forward to moving on and learning some more.