Where the Beer Flows Like Wine...

Before I post about how awesome the just-tapped Irish Stout is, I need to post about the Pilsener.

I didn't have time to post about it before because WE WERE TOO BUSY DRINKING IT ALL AS FAST AS WE COULD.

It was excellent. The best beer I have ever made by a long shot. Shawn took a keg and I kept one (we only brewed 10 gallons - big mistake!) and they were both gone in about 10 days. Everyone that tried it loved it including people that swore they hated homebrew. I took 2.5 growlers of it to a Super Bowl party and it was gone inside 30 minutes.

We will be making some tiny adjustments to it when we brew it again tomorrow. We're going to try the dry-hopping with a different kind of hops in each secondary and we're going to do a better job hitting our water volumes which should bring the ABV down a bit making it more the session beer it wants to be. Other than that, we're shooting for a repeat.

What Does Dry Hopping Taste Like?

Our first lager (Batch #21 Pilsener) is in the keg! We lagered for about 4 weeks total. 2 weeks at 50F and 2 weeks at 30F. Both kegs went right in to the fridge to keep them cooooold while they carbonate. The beer is a very light straw color and completely translucent - a first for this brewery.

We split this 10 gallon batch and only dry hopped half of it so we could taste the difference. I sampled both as they racked to the kegs and the un-dry hopped tasted like flat Bud - pretty boring but drinkable. The dry hopped half (or D.H. or Designated Hitter) has much more flavor but is not over hopped at all - at least at this point.

We'll see how they taste once they are carbed up - about 7 days.

Batch #21 - Our First Lager

Shawn and I brewed up 10 gallons of Pilsener on Friday afternoon. The brew day started off rough with traffic accidents closing Route 70 between our houses and our normal homebrew store being completely out of any lager yeasts. We overcame though and the actual brew session was the smoothest one yet.