Death and Gravity - Tasting
It's been quite a while since I last wrote anything on here. I've been pretty busy, but I have also brewed some interesting beers. Perhaps then it's appropriate to write about a beer that I brewed in August last year and bottled in June this year. Death and Gravity is an old ale fermented with a red wine yeast and brett. After fermentation was mostly done I racked the beer into two 12l PET carboys and added some rum-barrel oak cubes. I then pretty much forgot about the beer for a while, occasionally thinking I should perhaps bottle it, but not getting round to it. The result was that the beer sat on the oak for 9 months before I finally got round to bottling.
The resulting beer is a fantastically clear, dark red with a strong oak character. It is perhaps fitting for a beer fermented with red wine yeast that it looks like an aged Pinot Noir. The oak was rather overwhelming at first but has mellowed in the 4 months since bottling. I aimed for a rather low level of carbonation at 2.1 vol of CO2 and it works well here. The brett character is minimal though, with only the slightest hints of funk peeking round the edges here and there. With 8.4% alcohol it comes as no surprise that there is a noticeable alcohol warmth present too.
Overall I'm not entirely happy with how this beer turned out. There is simply something not quite right about it, the oak is perhaps a bit too strong, or the alcohol too pronounced or the brett not quite funky enough. Put simply it's all somehow off-balance. Must try harder next time, I guess.