Super Brew Racking Weekend
Yea it's a pretty lame title, but I'm sick and not in the mood to be overly creative.
This weekend I did some of the necessary upkeep to my brews to keep things moving along. In order to do this, I had to stop off get two more 5 gallon carboys for secondary because everything I have now needs to sit for at least a month in a secondary container.
Here are the updates:
Samuel Jackson (pictured on the right)
This was brewed on 1/20/08 and was racked over last weekend so that we could use the yeast cake for the kaffir lime imperial lager (KLIL). This brew would up with quite a bit of traub and I had to top it off in the secondary with some water. It has been sitting in the fridge at 41f for the last week. This weekend I gave it a second racking because of all the traub that was built up and I dry hopped with with a half oz of Amarillo hops (8% AAU). I also added some of my gelatin to hopefully give it a nice clear finish.
Kaffir Lime Imperial Lager (pictured above on the left)
The KLIL was brewed last weekend and in spite of the high gravity, made quick business of the 1.072 OG. When I racked it over it was reading 1.009 for a FG making this a 8.2% ABV lager that is dangerously smooth.
For the kaffir lime part of this brew, per Nick's instructions, I took 10 fresh kaffir lime leaves that had been in the freezer for the past week and diced them into thin slices. The freezing was to allow the glands that hold the lime smell and flavor to burst and cutting them was to get off of the stuff in the glands exposed. From here, I boiled the thin slices in 4qts of water for an hour. I added a little gelatin into the mix at the end for clarity as well.
I added the liquid into the secondary with the pieces of kaffir lime leaf in the mix. This will sit in 41f for secondary for at least one month.
Tripel Nipple
Finally I have the tripel that I brewed. It's been sitting patiently for the past two weeks in secondary on my bench (a nice even 61f) and I am not going to move it until I bottle it. I am looking at waiting a month on that one as well, but I might consider bottling in another 2 weeks depending on what my brewing storage vessel needs are.
Finally, next weekend I am headed to Colorado for some snowboarding and sampling of great brews. I am a fan of New Belgium's Fat Tire which I had for the first time while I was at A-Basin last time I was out there a few years back.
4 comments:
I rarely secondary anything any more. And just came across some new corny kegs, so anything I'm going to secondary will be done in those instead of glass carboys. They're unbreakable, can be pressure-sealed, and when the time comes to drink it, you can either drink it from the keg (if you're so equipped), or you can carbonate and bottle right off the keg.
If you're brewing enough, kegging is the way to go!
yea I keg, I have 6 of them. How does this "kegging secondary" process work for you? Do you bleed off the O2 when you pressurize the keg? Doesn't that stop a lot of what is going on in secondary fermentation? The guy from my LHBS said that he cut an inch off the dip tube on a keg that he uses for a secondary so that it leaves the traub at the bottom.
Interesting idea, but at this point a lot of my kegs are "long-term storage" and I don't have enough of them to do that. Though dollar for dollar it sounds pretty good.
BTW I noticed that you're headed to Colorado...
If you're in Denver, you MUST hit up the Falling Rock Tap House. Best beer bar I've ever been to, and I've been to a few.
CO has a lot of great breweries... If you're out there, there are better things you can pick up from New Belgium than Fat Tire... 1554 is one of my personal NB favorites.
Brad -
Tried the 1554 and I liked it, not my fav though. I love the Abby and Trippel they do. Great brews. They had a Belgian sour ale on tap only available in the brewery when I was there. I kind of felt bad drinking it because I don't really appreciate them, but yet I still drank it.
Cheers!
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