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| You expected a different cap color?? |
The time has arrived for me to move beyond the flip cap bottle. No that I'm going to start selling anytime soon, but more because there are times when I want to be able to not mind if a bottle doesn't come back. Flip cap bottles can cost up to $2 each, so I'm sure you can understand why I might want to go this route.
But what about the beer??
This weekend wasn't supposed to be a big brew weekend. At the most, I was thinking I might knock out the other experimental IPA batch. Mostly, this weekend saw me tending to the batches in process as well as a little bit of attention to the garden...which may supply some fermentables later in the year.
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| And the answer is none. None more black. |
The two batches seen above are the Chocolate Stout and the CDL. I put the stout into secondary and it weighed in at 1.024, down from 1.086. Not much further to go and I anticipate bottling this weekend. The CDL was also coming along nicely. It is also only a few points away from being done. The massive layer at the bottom is most likely due to that last krausen it went through...which means I either need to be REALLY careful at bottling time or put it into a third bottle to refine...and if I do THAT, I may as well dry hop. Hmmm...sounds like a plan...
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| Chocolate stout trub. Looks tasty, right?? |
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| SCIENCE! |
In the end, I did end up putting together that other experimental IPA...well, technically a Cascadian Dark Ale. While I didn't take the full-on shortcut approach, I still feel like I'd rather stick with all-grain from here on out. It just clicks with me better. I ended up doing a long steep and even a longer boil so I could really pull some of the oils out of the Chinook hops. Centennial and Cascade were also used. It initially weighed in at 1.084, but this time, I knocked it down to 1.070. Why? Seemed like a good idea at the time....and a little extra volume wouldn't be so bad. Hopefully those yeastie beasties will do there thing and I'll have a good lead on my own CD-something.