SWMBO Slayer!

1.010, color is yellow and hazy.

Notice the krausen level.

Final take: 49 bottles of various sizes.

So the Slayer came it at 1.010, ~ 6.5%! Tasted pretty good right out of the bucket. Normally I don't particularly care for this style of beer, but my wife likes this style which is why I made it. So a few things to note about Wyeast #3944 Belgian Wit that I have learned/read:

1. Krausen - from the website, you need 33% head room for the krausen, so for a 5 gallon batch you would in theory need a container that would be  6.65 gallons to accommodate for the krausen growth during fermentation.

2. Fermentation is violet, vigorous and prolonged. I kept thinking it would be over soon, but it stayed very active for 10+ days, I think it finally started to settle down around the 11 or 12 day mark and I bottled it on the 15th day.

3. Produces a skunk or sulfur like smell. Don't get me wrong, the beer tasted good, but at bottling it smelled very skunky. I read around the internet and this seems to be a fairly common occurrence.

4. This yeast strain (from what I've read) does well in a higher temperature environment. At first I was keeping it in the lower end of the spectrum (64ish), however towards the end I let it get up to 74. The jury is still out, but we'll see soon enough.


And for my next brew, I've got a few options - an True Brew English Nut Brown Ale partial extract kit and a few canned extract kits from Muntons. I think I might go the easy route and do the canned 20 minute boil extract kits. I'm not sure how much time I'll have to donate to beer the rest of this month and April is looking just as busy.

Below is a picture of the Irish Red Ale I made, I personally didn't like it very much but my wife did. I brewed it with some friends one day after work. 

Irish Red Ale that my wife liked.