A Hoppy Best Bitter - 16Oct08 (photos)

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Sounds like a goodun - I've thrown our kitchen sink plug into the composter before - though luckily I saw it go in...!

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Going great guns. Nice and smelly too! Break material being thrown around like a snowstorm, which is always fun.

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Just a quick update on this one - I do have pictures if anyone wants to see them.

Checked on this today after four days in primary and it had hit its 1.012 target perfectly - nice.

I transferred it into a secondary bucket, leaving all the break and yeast crud behind, and just taking nice clean brown hoppy beer looking stuff into a new home where it will now sit for about ten days.

After checking my hop stocks I found that for some reason I'd left behind a measly 21g of Styrians the other night instead of throwing it in as extra aroma hops. So I boiled up a muslin, some marbles and some thread and bagged the extra hoppage up, popping into the secondary for seven days of dry-hopping.

The secondary is burping once again, so I actually expect this to drop a few points further over that time, but it really has no need to on my account, it smells good and is strong enough for me. Nice colour too, so I'm pretty happy all in all. Plenty of time to screw it up still though.

*Oh if anyone cares, the Garden Dark and the Pion Brew have been under a couple of pounds of pressure out in cold conditioning for a week now, following a further week each in the warm. I'm going to give one of them a try on Bonfire Night, and right now I want the Dark.

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This is down to 1.010 now and burping gently as it eats up the small bag of dry hops, but I'll leave it for several more days until its had its fill.

I had a taste and it's very promising, although I have a hunch I may have been happier had I used a bit less crystal and a bit more pale. Not that I actually had any more. So pointless speculating I guess. it looks good, smells good, tastes good - I shouldn't complain really. Yet.



More pictures of most things on the blog wotsit.

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Last week this Best finished its secondary with dry hops, dropped bright and was moved into a keg and a few swingtops for a week of warm conditioning. Last night it was put under a couple of pounds of pressue and hefted outside for around four weeks of cold conditioning before some pre-Christmas supping.

I've uploaded some pictures and captions to my website if you're interested.

Next brew will be the stout I've been planning in the recipe section - here's hoping the malt and yeast will arrive in time!