It's never nice to tip beer away, especially when you know how lovely it was, but we've had a few comments that the final tank of "Slave to the Wage" wasn't tasting quite right so we decided to investigate just what was going on.
It's one of the big batches we brewed late last year and the final tank sat on the dry hops too long through an oversight; normally this wouldn't matter, but Nelson Sauvin pellets seem to change from superbly fruity to overly grassy very quickly. Add to this a hint of oxidation which has got into the tank somehow from, I'm guessing, not being flushed with CO2 well enough when it was filled up and you get beer which doesn't meet our exacting standards.
So, the remaining five 9's were today committed to the big drain in the sky. Lessons have been learnt for sure, and I'm confident that it won't happen again - or, as sure as you can be when dealing with a live substance like beer! I had a sniff of the casks as they were emptied and, whilst I'm sure many brewers would have sent them out without a qualm, I wasn't 100% happy with them so down the drain they went.
To put a positive glint on things this was only 10% of the total batch we brewed, we've learnt plenty about dry-hopping and CO2 flushing of CTs along the way and I'm happy to be preserving our reputation for quality beer rather than sending out second-rate beer.
Onwards and upwards....
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