It may be Lent, and I may not be drinking (20 days to go!), but that certainly won’t stop me from making beer.
Last weekend (March 10) my friend and I decided to brew a batch of beer. It was my turn to get the kit, so I went to the homebrew supply store and picked up a kit for an IPA. I chose that largely because I wanted something relatively hoppy and flavorful, but not heavy and stout-like. It’s spring, after all.
We set up shop on a 50 degree day in my friend’s garage and started the boil. This was another extract recipe, but because we had the space in the pot, I decided to do a full 5-gallong boil instead of 2.5 gallons that were later diluted with water.
The wort tasted alright, nothing spectacular. The hops we used were Columbus, in three different stages. I racked the beer into a plastic primary fermenter that I had borrowed from my parents (along with virtually all of the other brewing gear) and then carefully squeezed the fermenter full of beer into the front seat of my car. Unlike a 6.5 gallon carboy, which will fit in that space, the fermenter doesn’t fit with the lid on. Jetta had to be driven carefully to get all the beer home in the bucket, and not all over the car.
Today (March 17) I racked over the beer into a new glass carboy. This time, we racked into a 5 gallon one and will hopefully not commit the same mistake that we did with the Fauxberon. I wanted to put my own twist on the beer, so I elected to dry-hop it. It was kind of a messy process (memo to self: get a funnel).
Dry hop addition was 2oz of Chinook whole-leaf hops. If I’ve had Chinook before, I wouldn’t know, but my official taster of fermented beverages tells me that at this point it tastes like an IPA.
My plan at this point is to bottle in two weeks and enjoy two weeks later. I still haven’t decided if I want to bottle in 12oz bottles or growlers, but at this point I’m leaning towards 12oz bottles. We’ll see.
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