Batch Two…
A perfect Fall weekend for brewing… After requisite yard and house chores I jumped into transfering the Belgian Strong “Golden” from the primary fermenter into the secondary. Although far from finished, I took a specific gravity reading to see how things were coming, and if my calculations are right, I’m already looking at close to 8.5% alcohol by volume… Not bad considering there was still good yeast activity, and there’s 5 more months of aging/fermenting to go. Although still very green the beer had a nice full feel, and nearly all of the sweetness was gone. I have strong hopes for this beer!
I don’t feel quite as excited about the batch I started today though… It was just one of those brewing sessions where nothing goes quite as it should…
After a sucessful boil, transfer and topping up, I snapped the neck of my racking cane while attempting to remove the racking hose… Considering I use the racking cane to ’stir’ the water into the wort for topping up, this did not bode well… I did my best with the shortened cane, but I think I may not have had a thorough mix… Or should I say I’m hoping I didn’t have a very good mix, as my pre-pitch gravity reading was nearly .018 points off where it should have been… Time will tell… Hopefully the beer will be fermenting nicely in the morning. This is a relatively quick beer, so I should be racking it into secondary in 7-10 days or so, we’ll see how the reading is then…
At this point Geetha and I are scheduled to have 3 beers in secondary when we depart for India at the beginning of December. It will be good to “force” myself to let the beer age, but it also means the first of January I will be force carbonating 3 beers at once! With 15 gallons of beer on hand at once time will be right for one heck of a party!