The brewmaster stews over his skunky brew

Jake fills the last few bottles of his skunky brew

My husband, man of many talents and limitless energy, brews a lot of beer.  We usually have at least 2-3 carboys fermenting at any given time. Most of his home brew comes out awesome — like a chocolate stout he made awhile back — but others, like the wheat beer pictured here, come out rank.

The problem is that beer, like wine, is tempermental. It’s fussy. It needs the right amount of light and air and warmth. You can’t just throw ingredients in a jug and hope they ferment like they’re supposed to. And my husband, because he moves at a million miles per hour, sometimes inadvertently skips over the finer points of the process  and ends up treating brewing like making a pitcher of Crystal Light: Dump and stir.  Sometimes this imprecise strategy works. Sometimes it doesn’t.

As the designated bottling wench, my job was to fill all 40 to 50 bottles of this skunky wheat beer last night. I made the comment that the smell sort of reminded me of urine. Jake, who sat at the kitchen table capping each bottle, said, “Yeah, that’s kinda what I thought too. But I’m hoping the finishing fermentation in the bottles take care of that.”

It may or may not. We’ll have to wait a month to find out. We think the problem is that we allowed the beer to ferment in a jug set before a window. Beer likes a warm temperature and darkness.We think the sunlight did something to the yeast to make it funky.

We gave the beer a taste last night, and the flavor was surprisingly benign. It just smelled bad. I’m not sure how to divorce smell from taste when drinking beer, but Jake said he’s up to the challenge of quaffing all 50 bottles no matter what they smell like.  I don’t think he can bear wasting his precious brew, no matter how it bad it may turn out. His get-it-down strategy:  Dose each glass with lots and lots of orange and lemon.

Waste not, want not, I guess.  But I’m glad I’m pregnant.  He’ll have to drink this stuff on his own.

Tagged as: skunky brew