Carbonation Taste Test: Wild Red Velvet

After one week in the bottle, WRV has good carbonation and a rich red color.

A reasonably lasting head at week one, but I believe I detect acetaldehyde in the nose. 

Opened a bottle of my Wild Red Velvet experiment after one week at room temperature to see how the carbonation is coming along. During cold crash, I had let the fermentor go to 28 ºF for a day, which formed ice crystals in the top half of the wort. (Now I know how to make an eisbock one day.) I worried the cold might have killed the yeast before carbonation, but it has held up fine.

Looking back over my texts to Sean describing tasting impressions:

• Rich red color. Still a bit hazy.
• Strange but enticing funky aroma. Couldn't quite place it at first. Eventually settled on the seeds from papaya. That rich, tropical, musky aroma. Likely acetaldehyde, which results from incomplete yeast activity. Should diminish with further conditioning. 
• Creamy mouthfeel. Very drinkable. Slightly tart caramel. LIke a candied Granny Smith apple.
• Well hidden alcohol.
• By week two, the papaya seed aroma is fading, and the beer is taking on a drier character. The oak is starting to come through. 
• Beginning to think about what WRV would taste like with a further inoculation of brettanomyces to bring in a more recognizable funk. 

The lactobacillus funk is similar to a mild French soft cheese in some respects. I enjoy it, but I also hope it changes as the beer conditions in the bottle. The closest approximation I have to compare it to is BFM Abbaye de Saint Bon-Chien 2007. I really can't wait to see how this one conditions.