Out in the garden an increasing number of flowers are blooming although, strictly speaking, it is too early for roses (and I don’t have any of those growing in the first place). However, this week I decided it was time to taste my February Flowers IPA brew.

Actually, the truth is that I tried my first bottle last week and it was underwhelming. Good potential but clearly not ready. This week it still has  a way to go before reaching peak condition but is much further on. It has cleared up well with a beautiful golden-orange colour and has a good balance between malt and hop in the flavours. What it lacks though is fizz.

There is a little carbonation but the beer is relatively flat. I’ll wait a couple of weeks and I expect it will have improved a little by then. However, I wonder if it was down to not enough sugar in priming or, perhaps more crucially, not enough headspace left in the bottle. From an earlier batch I had observed that the bottles which were more filled seemed to pop better when opened but I tried to only leave about 1cm in this set and, after further reading, wonder if I have gone too far the other way?

It will probably be early April before I get another batch underway but I think I might aim for closer to 1″ (or 2.5cm). Of course, by that point, I will have left a suitable pause to crack open another of my February Flowers and make a more informed decision.