St Peter’s Golden Ale
Due to the cold weather throughout January 2012 we began using a brew belt to help keep the temperature of the fermenter constant. Whether it was due to that or not we got a full fermentation on this ale. With a gravity starting at 1042 and finishing at 1007, we have achieved a strength of 4.8% ABV.
We began drinking our St Peter’s Golden Ale after approximately six weeks, which I thought was sufficient time for it to reach “maturity”, so to speak. This Golden Ale is certainly the palest beer I have brewed to date, although to my surprise the was not especially clear after six weeks. It had a rather bland flavour and, despite having a frothy head, it tasted quite flat. I was really very disappointed. I was sure this ale could have been better but I could not see where I had gone wrong. I went out and bought a bottle of St Peter’s Golden Ale from Waitrose supermarket to taste the difference and as I suspected there was a big one. The bottled ale was vastly more effervescent than my cask variety. I suspect those who choose to bottle their ale might yield better results than me.
In the middle of May I decided to transfer what remained in the 40pint barrel to a half size one as I needed the larger one for another brew. Before tightening the lid I added some extra finings to see if we could improve it. To my surprise this did help and made it possible to drink the remainder of the brew. One thing that was never in question about this ale was its strength, after a few pints I was guaranteed to sleep very heavily!