Carbonation Ruminations

It seems like my last few brews have taken an atypically long time to carbonate in the bottle. My guess is that since it is winter, my storage room has been quite a bit cooler and that this has affected my carbonation rate in comparison to my earlier brews. For instance, take Dummkopf Dunkelweizen and Black Ryeday: it's been three weeks since I bottled them, and the last two bottles I opened of each (at 1 week and 2 weeks since bottling) had not carbonated up well at all.

The Dummkopf I just cracked today, however, has begun to carbonate up nicely, so I think I will do a little tasting of it and Black Ryeday; I may also see how Terrible Tripel is coming along.

Dummkopf has a nice color but relatively poor head retention, despite the good level of carbonation it has attained. The aroma is pretty low-key, but it does have a nice banana and chocolate thing going on; I'm definitely going to have to use the Weihenstephaner yeast again. Flavor is a bit hot on the alcohol side; this guy ended up about 6.6% which is high for the style. A little of the banana comes through, but there is also a fair presence of esters which could possibly be part of the high ABV. Mouthfeel is nice and creamy, but drinkability is impacted by the noticeably high ABV.

Black Ryeday has a slightly orange golden color and a nice white head (admittedly, I poured vigorously). The head leaves a very nice lace, too. It has a very herbal/spicy aroma on top of its malt base which is interesting but I'm not so sure I'd go so far as to call it "good". Flavor is slightly sweet but similarly spicy. Actually, I'm getting some strawberry flavors here which I totally did not expect. Wow, this is interesting; I'm liking it! Mouthfeel is pretty creamy, which I also like. This strawberry thing is kind of freaking me out, but it makes for good drinkability. This one will be interesting!

Finally, on to Terrible Tripel. I haven't had one in a couple of weeks and I admit that I haven't been too impressed so far. This pouring shows enough carbonation to yield a half-finger head. Color is cidery and cloudy. Aroma is sweet with some slightly tart cidery character; this is probably due to the sugar. Flavor is unsubtle; it is exceedingly malty, quite sweet, somewhat cidery and rather sticky. It's not too bad but it is rather hot, from an alcohol standpoint, and there's a graininess toward the end which I prefer not to have. Could that be the Pilsner malt? Next time I'll just try it with domestic 2-row. However, for a style as complex, refined and steeped in history as tripel, this isn't too bad for a first try. Mouthfeel is nice and creamy; I got good carb with this one. It is drinkable, but the alcohol is way too hot and the grain is a bit of a drawback. This beer does have the distinction of getting better with each sip, at least through the first bottle. It's not necessarily the alcohol; I think that the cidery bits finally inure you to the grainy bits and then you develop a resistance to the cider. In any case, I'm going to try to keep some of this stuff for at least 6 months to see what happens.