Rogue's I2PA

Rogue Imperial Pale Ale

I brewed this beer a little over 5 weeks ago and in doing this I made a vow to God that I would not taste any alcohol till I put this beer in a keg. Hallelujah my fast is over! And may God be praised for His provision of beer. I did make allowances for special occasions such as Thanksgiving and fellowship times with the men of the church but other than that I remained without God’s wonderful blessing. The beer should have only taken two weeks to ferment but when I made the beer the temperature dropped 20 degrees and since the only heat I have in the house is that which is generated by our fireplace and since I don't get home till 1700 hrs. that means that the house is essentially the same temp. as it is outside. This being the case the low temp caused my yeast to slow down its work. In addition to the low temp the beer is an imperial (meaning more ingredients and therefore a higher alcohol content) the yeast was working extra hard to continue the fermentation process.

So at around 3 weeks the fermentation stopped and I checked the specific gravity and it was only a little past halfway through its fermentation process. Plus, the most alarming thing was that it was retrograde fermenting. Meaning that the air was being sucked into the carboy and into the beer. This isn’t good.
Normal fermentation will have bubbles come out of the carboy and into the air via the gooseneck devise called an airlock.

I called the Home Brewery where I get all my supplies and they were more than helpful in helping me with my problem. (They can be reached at 1.800.321.BREW or www.homebrewery.com they are fantastic). They told me that the yeast in my beer went dormant because of the low temperature and the hard time it was having in fermenting. So, I siphoned the beer out into a bucket and then siphoned it back into the carboy to reactivate the yeast. I also filled up a plastic tub with water and put the carboy into it with an aquarium heater that I wasn’t using.

I think the theory is a sound one (if the water is a certain temperature such as 70* then the beer will be the same temperature). However, it was still a slow and arduous process. So around week 4 I began to put the beer on top of our kegerator while we had our fireplace going. This seemed to work pretty well as the stopcock was pretty active.


But alas, the yeast once again went dormant and since the specific gravity was around 1.03 (ideal would be 1.02) I went ahead and kegged the beer. I tried it and although there was a great deal of sediment (yeast and left over hops) the beer was pretty good. Although, I will let it sit in the keg for about 2 weeks before I will really tap this beer. The time will help it mellow out a bit. But it will still be pretty hoppy. Rogue just makes really good beers and even though this is just a clone of theirs it tastes much like what they make. I made a Rochfort Trappist Ale #10 that tastes better than the original. My roommate Blake helped me with that one.