Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Brewing Beer: Secondary Fermentation - Fresh Hopping

To make a long story short the IPA and NRK primary fermentation is finished. I kegged the NRK. Well sorta. I'm using the soda keg as a secondary fermenter. I racked it into the keg and shot some CO2 in to clean the air our of the headspace in the keg. Then I used the pressure relief valve to expel the excess until there was no pressure in the keg. The NRK (Not Really Kolsch: German ale with some wheat added) tasted pretty good. We'll see once the secondary is finished. That brings up another point. I planned on taking this with me to Thanksgiving dinner at my aunt's. I think it will be ready. I guess I could always bill it as a German cask conditioned ale ;-) At around 4.0% it should be very drinkable. I hope they like it as much as they did last year. What about the IPA? Its hoppier than Sierra Nevada pale ale already! We tasted it and it has sooo much potential. It isn't done fermenting yet and I just added 5 oz. fresh (frozen since I harvested them) Cascade hops to the secondary. I'm hoping it all turns out. It is great right now, but, I can't wait to see what the fresh hops added to the mix.

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