I cannot believe it’s been almost a year since brewing a batch. Then today happened. Today I finally did it!
Luckily I was mindful enough to keep the recipe kit items sealed and in the basement where they’d have a nice, nearly-steady temperature and humidity. And all of the hops had been ziploc’d and stored in the freezer. With all that in mind there isn’t too much worry about any of the ingredients having gone bad. We’ll know in a month. Yes, A MONTH!
Why a month, you ask? Because this baby is a double IPA with multiple hops cooked into the wort and a more hops going into the fermenter at the two-week mark (aka dry hopping).
So what is this (hopefully) delicious beer that’s just starting its fermenting process? It’s another MrBeer extract recipe called Slipper Socks Double IPA. This baby should both taste delicious and pack a punch. Once it is ready to enjoy, the specs should be:
- Flavor: Hoppy
- ABV: 8.1%
- SRM (color): 7
- IBU (bitterness): 76
The recipe includes Golden Ale and Canadian Blonde HMEs, Columbus hops, Simcoe hops, and Centennial hops. All three of the hops are both cooked into the wort and will be dry hopped during the fermentation process. I’m expecting them to really be flavor-forward!
Now we wait… and wait… and wait.
01/29/2023 Update: It’s already been 14 days since brew day. You know what that means — it’s time to dry hop! After brew day there were quite a bit of hops leftover – 1 1/2 bags of Columbus, 1/2 bag of Simcoe, and 1/2 bag of Centennial. Using cleaned scissors I opened the sealed bag of Columbus and dumped all 3 of the remaining half bags into it. This way I was able to have the fermenter lid open for as short a time as possible (avoid contamination!).
A quick twist of the lid, a dump of the bag, and a quick reseal — and done.
Now we wait another week before it’s time to start sampling the beer to see if it’s ready for bottling. Stay tuned!
02/07/2023 Update: Bottling night! On Sunday night I did sample it and it could have been bottled up that night. But with all of the loose hops in there from the dry hopping (plus the hops bags that went into the fermenter after cooking) there was way too much particulate. They’re perfectly safe but who wants floaties in their beer? So I quickly ordered a large stock of muslin bags so that I could use one as a filter while filling the bottles. Those arrived today so it was time to get to work!
Lather, rinse, repeat (pun sort of intended) all of the bottles and bottling equipment – and then watch the latest episode of The Last of Us. Now it’s bottling time – for real!
It was a slow process having to filter each fill. Very, very slow. And it’s hard to tell how much of the particulates made it into the bottle, but from what was collected from the filtering, I sure kept a lot out of there.
Now for the sad part — I usually can fill between 19-22 bottles from the small batch. But the slurry became so thick towards the end I was only able to fill 17 fully. That’s ok, though. I had a half bottle of this uncarbonated beer that tasted so good, I got to go ahead and have some tonight! (More than just my teaspoon tasting.
Time to wait another two weeks for the carbonation to do its thing, fridge condition a test bottle for 2 days, and report back here the results!
