Last night we tried 2 bottles of the Jalapeño Saison. I had made a double batch (i.e. 2 gallons) to verify whether racking the beer into a secondary vessel would have any effect on various parameters: color, flavor, ... It took only a few days after transferring one of the fermenters for the difference to be apparent. The secondary's beer was much clearer. Two weeks ago we bottled both, but alas, I made a mistake then. I used agave nectar for priming (so that the beer would carbonate inside the bottles) and added that to the priming bucket. In went the beer that was in the secondary vessel and then I bottled. There's a step missing here though: stirring. I completely forgot to mix the agave nectar and beer resulting in what I think will be under- and over-carbonated beer. Here's a picture of the saison from the primary vessel only:
Nice foamy head, a very nice amount of bubbles and a subtle scent of jalapeños wafted out of the glass. I'll be honest here, when I first brewed the beer and tasted the boiled wort I wasn't much of a fan. When I tasted the now fermented beer again during the bottling process I still wasn't sold. My wife liked it, but to me it tasted too much like raw vegetables (think smell/taste of green peppers). It's worth noting that the jalapeños would only impart their pepper flavoring and not the spiciness. This would have required a different architecture. Before going on about the taste of the beer, here's a picture of the 2 bottles poured into tulip glasses. On the left (JP 1) is the beer that had been sitting in the primary fermenter only and on the right (JP 2) we have the one that came from our much clearer secondary fermentation vessel.
Noticeable differences: the head on JP2 was nearly non-existent and the bubbling was definitely nowhere near as active as in JP1's glass. Surely enough, JP2 also had a more pronounced jalapeño scent. Still, after sampling it was clear that the vegetable pepper flavor had mellowed out, probably because of the bottle conditioning.
The clear winner here, in my opinion, was JP1, but of course the comparison is not completely fair given that I botched the experiment during priming. We liked them both and they nicely complemented a snack of tortilla chips and salsa. In the end, that's what really matters!
It's not all about beer here! My wife made a second batch of ice cream yesterday afternoon. The day before she had made an adult version of chocolate ice cream: a mixture of chocolate, de-seeded raspberries (with a minimal amount of sugar) and some Chambord. Here's an action shot of her making the custard for strawberry chocolate ice cream for the kiddies:
The clear winner here, in my opinion, was JP1, but of course the comparison is not completely fair given that I botched the experiment during priming. We liked them both and they nicely complemented a snack of tortilla chips and salsa. In the end, that's what really matters!
It's not all about beer here! My wife made a second batch of ice cream yesterday afternoon. The day before she had made an adult version of chocolate ice cream: a mixture of chocolate, de-seeded raspberries (with a minimal amount of sugar) and some Chambord. Here's an action shot of her making the custard for strawberry chocolate ice cream for the kiddies: