#40, #41 and #42: Kegged and bottled

This time it came to a fairly short fermentation for all three brews. Both the Bohemian Pilsener and the Belgian Strong Dark fermented quickly and below their FG targets. The India Pale Ale did also ferment quickly, but didn't quite reach the target which I believe is because of a higher than intended mash temperature, complex malts and a cold fermentation.

The Belgian Strong Dark ended up with a whopping 11.3% abv. Wow. The FG was 1.011, which was 5 points below where I thought it would end up. I blame the simple sugars. Spot on with the Rochefort 10, a beer which the sample I had brought images of. I also found the beer to be a bit lighter in colour than I had expected. The same thing happened with the Belgian Amber I did a while back. The liquid candi sugar is clearly not as dark as stated on the bottle. Because this is a really strong beer it should keep for a while, so I bottled all of it. Having a 11.3% beer on tap is not optimal, it would have been fun, but not good for the keg rotation.

I mentioned earlier that there was a sulphurous smell from the Pilsener fermentation. That did go away after a couple of days. In all the fermentation was really quiet, almost no krausen on top and no bubbles through the airlock (because of a leak in the lid I guess). The FG was 1.013, exactly as estimated.

The final gravity for the India Pale Ale was 1.019, which is 3 points above the estimate. There is quite a bit of specialty malts in this beer, and some of them are not entirely fermentable. The aroma is also surprisingly nutty, likely because of the amber malts. The small uncarbonated sample I tried had a slightly sharp bitterness, but was overall not that bitter. And as expected, there was quite a bit of hop aroma. Life is good.