first brew, part 6

This afternoon I had a glass of what I am now calling Flat Wan Ale. This was from the bottle I tasted a week ago. There may be slightly more carbonation now, but it's nowhere close to where I'd like it. (Tracey sampled it last week, too. She said, "No offense, but it tastes like warm flat beer." Far from being wounded, I was happy that she successfully identified the room-temperature uncarbonated liquid as vaguely beer-like!) It is fairly hoppy and today I thought it had some bitterness too, which surprised me. But it remains dull and has very little body.

I do know that at least some CO2 is still being produced because the partial bottle had again developed a little pressure. It may still be premature, but I think I'm going to take this opportunity to do an experiment since I have two identical two-liter bottles remaining. I am going to give one a good shake to redistributed the yeast, and leave the other alone. I'll keep them at room temperature until, say, the end of the year. This ale is a major clunker, as expected, but at least it affords an opportunity to test this technique.

OK, bottle #1 is unperturbed and bottle #2 has been shaken. Much of the settled yeast is back in suspension. It foamed when shaken, but I don't have a good sense of how to relate that to degree of carbonation. When I checked an hour later the foam was gone and the bottle had not exploded, for which I was grateful.