My MO for this year is to start to develop some of the stuff that worked well last year, but I also want to build some stuff that I can work on for next year. My brewing buddy Ted did a smoke beer last year that was absolutely fantastic, and it was definitely the inspiration for this one, with it's smooth forward smoke flavor and beautiful red hue:
No Gas Rauchbier-
Fermentables-
German Pilsner- 3 lbs
Dark Munich- 3 lbs
Rauch Malt- 3 lbs
Cara Pils- 8 oz
Black Patent- 1 oz
Hops-
Mt Hood- 7/8 oz- 90ish minutes
Crystal- .5 oz- 10 minutes
Yeast-
Wyeast Bavarian Lager 2206- 1000 ml starter
OG Target/Actual-
1.050/1.068
I had been wanting to do a rauchbier, but I wanted an even amount of smoke in a medium sized beer. Something you drink several of because it's a strong taste but still refreshing. The hops are low alpha acid noble varietals. They should provide some nice bitterness, but I didn't want much since the star of this beer was supposed to be the malt. To that end, I picked a Bavarian Lager yeast, which is supposed to highlight malts. I'm planning on using the yeast cake in another version of the Darkish American Lager No. 2.
So it was a real cold brew day (somewhere in the 20's), and to keep the gas flowing I had to dunk my propane tank in hot water. And then about ten minutes into what was supposed to be a 90 minute boil, I realized I was about to completely run out. I dropped everything, ran to the gas station and got some more. My boil stopped for about 15 minutes as near as I can tell, since on my trip to get gas, I zeroed out my stopwatch. By the time I got the gas going again, my wort was about 160 degrees.
At that point, this beer was basically screwed in the sense that it was not going to end up with what I had wanted. I decided once it got boiling again to just boil another 60 minutes, and call it a beer. I had a lot more evaporation than I had anticipated, so I ended up with a much higher gravity and a lot less beer. Something like 4 gallons or so.
Oh well. As I always tell my dad when he's having issues with his beers: the worst case scenario is you made beer. I'm thinking once it's in the bottle, I'll lay it down for a while, as the higher gravity with the smoke is going to need some time to condition.
I also now have two propane tanks, so I'll never run out again. Now I just need it to stay cold long enough to do another lager before spring arrives.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Monday, February 2, 2009
Darkish American Lager No. 1
I hadn't brewed in a month, mostly due to a crazy work schedule, and it was time to get this show back on the road.
The recipe-
Fermentables-
Pilsner- 4 pounds
Vienna Malt- 4 pounds
CaraVienna- 4 ounces
CaraPils- 4 ounces
Crystal Malt 60L- 4 ounces
Black Patent Malt- 1 ounce
Hops-
Nugget (11)- .75 ounces- 60 minutes
Vanguard (4.6)- .875 ounces- 10 minutes
Yeast-
Wyeast 2007 Pilsner- 1400 ml starter
Mash-
149/167- hot water infusions- missed this by 1 degree
Gravity Target/Actual-
1.045/1.044
My initial idea with this beer was to make an orange one. It struck me that orange as a taste is probably not all that hot in beer form (truth be told, "orange drink" was horrendous out of those leaky McDonalds cups when we were kids). I wanted some depth of flavor, but I didn't want grain soup, so while there are a few different character grains in it, they are low in weight (the Patent Malt was just there to darken it a little. And it does not take much. I think it was something like 2 tablespoons worth to get the color I wanted). The Nugget hops will give it an assertive forward bitterness, but the late Vanguard addition should make smooth too. Balance. I would have called it Balance Beer, but that sounds like maybe a manufacturer of energy bars for ladies have gone into the beer business. You know, like, it's beer, but it helps fight Osteoperosis. Maybe you could have a bunch of women sitting in those inexplicable Viagra commercial bathtubs in the middle of some far off field drinking them and laughing together. Or maybe a bunch of women in one bathtub. At least it would be a fun commercial anyway.
Super close on my temps, super close on my gravity, blah blah blah. It was nice to brew again. I'm glad my technique is consistent. My beers this year are going to be so much better. I can't wait to crack the first one of these open sometime late in March.
The recipe-
Fermentables-
Pilsner- 4 pounds
Vienna Malt- 4 pounds
CaraVienna- 4 ounces
CaraPils- 4 ounces
Crystal Malt 60L- 4 ounces
Black Patent Malt- 1 ounce
Hops-
Nugget (11)- .75 ounces- 60 minutes
Vanguard (4.6)- .875 ounces- 10 minutes
Yeast-
Wyeast 2007 Pilsner- 1400 ml starter
Mash-
149/167- hot water infusions- missed this by 1 degree
Gravity Target/Actual-
1.045/1.044
My initial idea with this beer was to make an orange one. It struck me that orange as a taste is probably not all that hot in beer form (truth be told, "orange drink" was horrendous out of those leaky McDonalds cups when we were kids). I wanted some depth of flavor, but I didn't want grain soup, so while there are a few different character grains in it, they are low in weight (the Patent Malt was just there to darken it a little. And it does not take much. I think it was something like 2 tablespoons worth to get the color I wanted). The Nugget hops will give it an assertive forward bitterness, but the late Vanguard addition should make smooth too. Balance. I would have called it Balance Beer, but that sounds like maybe a manufacturer of energy bars for ladies have gone into the beer business. You know, like, it's beer, but it helps fight Osteoperosis. Maybe you could have a bunch of women sitting in those inexplicable Viagra commercial bathtubs in the middle of some far off field drinking them and laughing together. Or maybe a bunch of women in one bathtub. At least it would be a fun commercial anyway.
Super close on my temps, super close on my gravity, blah blah blah. It was nice to brew again. I'm glad my technique is consistent. My beers this year are going to be so much better. I can't wait to crack the first one of these open sometime late in March.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Holy crap
The news: I have not brewed yet this calendar year.
More news: I will brew a lager this weekend.
I have just finished up an epic month long work related project. I am ready to brew again. I had planned on doing a one gallon batch to get the yeast cake for a big lager, but I'm going to scratch that. I've probably got another month and a half at best for doing lagers, and I'm going to try to squeeze three brew days out of that.
TBC
More news: I will brew a lager this weekend.
I have just finished up an epic month long work related project. I am ready to brew again. I had planned on doing a one gallon batch to get the yeast cake for a big lager, but I'm going to scratch that. I've probably got another month and a half at best for doing lagers, and I'm going to try to squeeze three brew days out of that.
TBC
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Lager season commences
I've gone on a few times about how I'm pretty much bound by the weather around here as to what I brew. With temps dropping down for the winter, it was time to brew a lager.
My dogs are friends with a number of dogs in our hood. One of them happens to belong to the head brewer for a pretty well known local brewery. I won't say who the brewery is, but you can probably guess it if your favorite movie is The Three Amigos, and your favorite band is Pink Floyd (Syd Barret version, of course). To make a long story short, he got a packet of hops a little while back that he couldn't really use. It was a little under three ounces of pellet hops. He gave them to me, with the stipulation that I'd give him a few to see what these hops were like. So, I give you: Three Dogs Lager:
Three Dogs Lager:
Fermentables-
Pale Six Row- 7 lbs
Flaked Maize- 2 lbs
Cara Pils- 8 oz
Hops-
Mt Hood- 1.5 oz- 60 minutes
GR Select Pellets- 2 oz- 15 minutes
GR Select Pellets- 1.875 oz- 5 minutes
Yeast-
Wyeast 2007- Pilsner- 1000 ml starter straight off the stir plate.
Mash-
149 infusion
Gravity target/actual-
1.051/1.046
I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted to do with this. Chris' brewery is known for some pretty hoppy beers (their mild would probably be called a IPA at some places), so I wanted to be sure that I brewed this in a way that would showcase the hops in a flavor/aroma sort of way. There aren't many commercial examples of the classic American Pilsner, so I wasn't too hemmed in by any classic guidelines. This is a style that German brewers started doing when they came to America, and as such they used the ingredients that they had on hand. They found lots of corn here, hence the flaked maize. Six row malt to help covert the corn. Cara pils to add some body and foam.
The brewing went pretty good. I missed my numbers for the first time in a while, but I am chalking that up to the maize. I hadn't used it much before, and never used six row, so I'm not too worried about it. It'll still have a decent amount of punch. The hops are all German in origin. The Mt Hood is a Hallertauer offshoot, and the GR Select is a low alpha acid Tettnanger hybrid. I threw everything I had in on the two final additions, so the hoppiness should jump out of this beer, because the grain is not malty at all.
I have to give an honorable mention to Kerry on this beer with her timely Christmas presents. Santa..er..Kerry gave me a really nice digital thermometer, and a refractometer. Really good equipment, easy to calibrate. It definitely made things easier today.
Not so nice was my discovery yesterday that my Altbier had an infection. Every bottle had a nice layer of scum forming on the top. This was a big bummer, as I had some high hopes for that recipe. Needless to say, it was a big time cleaning day today. Pretty much every brewing implement I own got a long soak in some hot PBW, with a long soak in sanitizer after. I tossed my old hoses, so I'm hoping this is a one time thing.
My dogs are friends with a number of dogs in our hood. One of them happens to belong to the head brewer for a pretty well known local brewery. I won't say who the brewery is, but you can probably guess it if your favorite movie is The Three Amigos, and your favorite band is Pink Floyd (Syd Barret version, of course). To make a long story short, he got a packet of hops a little while back that he couldn't really use. It was a little under three ounces of pellet hops. He gave them to me, with the stipulation that I'd give him a few to see what these hops were like. So, I give you: Three Dogs Lager:
Three Dogs Lager:
Fermentables-
Pale Six Row- 7 lbs
Flaked Maize- 2 lbs
Cara Pils- 8 oz
Hops-
Mt Hood- 1.5 oz- 60 minutes
GR Select Pellets- 2 oz- 15 minutes
GR Select Pellets- 1.875 oz- 5 minutes
Yeast-
Wyeast 2007- Pilsner- 1000 ml starter straight off the stir plate.
Mash-
149 infusion
Gravity target/actual-
1.051/1.046
I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted to do with this. Chris' brewery is known for some pretty hoppy beers (their mild would probably be called a IPA at some places), so I wanted to be sure that I brewed this in a way that would showcase the hops in a flavor/aroma sort of way. There aren't many commercial examples of the classic American Pilsner, so I wasn't too hemmed in by any classic guidelines. This is a style that German brewers started doing when they came to America, and as such they used the ingredients that they had on hand. They found lots of corn here, hence the flaked maize. Six row malt to help covert the corn. Cara pils to add some body and foam.
The brewing went pretty good. I missed my numbers for the first time in a while, but I am chalking that up to the maize. I hadn't used it much before, and never used six row, so I'm not too worried about it. It'll still have a decent amount of punch. The hops are all German in origin. The Mt Hood is a Hallertauer offshoot, and the GR Select is a low alpha acid Tettnanger hybrid. I threw everything I had in on the two final additions, so the hoppiness should jump out of this beer, because the grain is not malty at all.
I have to give an honorable mention to Kerry on this beer with her timely Christmas presents. Santa..er..Kerry gave me a really nice digital thermometer, and a refractometer. Really good equipment, easy to calibrate. It definitely made things easier today.
Not so nice was my discovery yesterday that my Altbier had an infection. Every bottle had a nice layer of scum forming on the top. This was a big bummer, as I had some high hopes for that recipe. Needless to say, it was a big time cleaning day today. Pretty much every brewing implement I own got a long soak in some hot PBW, with a long soak in sanitizer after. I tossed my old hoses, so I'm hoping this is a one time thing.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Biere de la Voie
I think that most people get the idea that the French are mostly effeminate snooty wine drinkers. I'm sure that unless you're a big beer fiend/brewer, most Americans are completely unaware that the French really have a beer style all their own. I confirmed this the other day at work, when I quizzed six dudes about French beer (one of whom used to bar tend).
Biere de Garde is a style that is a close cousin to the Belgian farmhouse Ales. In theory it's the beer of the miners, farmers and drunken cycling fans lining the cobblestone sections of the Paris-Roubaix. In brewing practice terms, it's an ale that is fermented at low ale temps, and then lagered (garde being the French counterpart for the German word lager) for a period of time. It's got a malty backbone that would be similar to some Belgian beers, or even the German Altbier, and the hoppiness should tend to be a bit more spicy as opposed to fruity. Like some French brewer found some two year old hops in his hayloft, and decided, what the hell, I'll use them anyway. So then:
Biere de la Voie-
Fermentables-
Belgian Two Row Pale- 7 lbs
Vienna- 2 lbs
Munich Light- 1 lb
Crystal 40L- 3.5 oz- I had actually planned on 8 ounces, but this is what I had in stock. It was more of a coloring addition than for flavor, so no big deal.
Table sugar- 8 oz
Hops-
Fuggle- 1.25 oz- 60 minutes
Mount Hood- 1 oz- 10 minutes
Yeast-
Wyeast 1007 German Ale- 1000 ml starter. This was what Wyeast recommends for Biere De Garde, and I happened to have it to hand, so it worked out nicely.
Mash-
149/168- hot water infusion
Gravity target/actual-
1.058/1.058
Another ho hum brewday. Which is not to say that I didn't enjoy myself. Just that nothing went wrong. I nailed all my temps. I nailed my target gravity. I guess I'm going to have to start writing a little more about why I'm choosing what I am for ingredients, or else I'll have nothing to write about.
As far as the ingredients go, I pretty much went with a standard Biere De Garde grain bill list. Table sugar to dry it out a little. The yeast is not typically a high attenuator, but the low mash temp, along with the sugar should get me to 80%. I'm going to start doing a force fermentation from now on to figure out what my actual terminal gravity will be, but I didn't have the extra yeast to do so this time.
Speaking of the yeast. If you ever decide to use Wyeast 1007, use a blow off tube. I do not have one at the moment, and it went absolutely crazy with this beer, blowing the carboy cap off twice. I suppose I could have tried to harvest the yeast off my pantry floor, but it's probably not the most...ahem...sanitary place to get your brewing yeast. A true top fermenting yeast. On the bright side, our furnace died sometime Saturday night, and the yeast kept working even though the temps strayed down into lager territory. I haven't tasted a beer that I've made with this yet, but I like how it works in a technical sense.
Biere de Garde is a style that is a close cousin to the Belgian farmhouse Ales. In theory it's the beer of the miners, farmers and drunken cycling fans lining the cobblestone sections of the Paris-Roubaix. In brewing practice terms, it's an ale that is fermented at low ale temps, and then lagered (garde being the French counterpart for the German word lager) for a period of time. It's got a malty backbone that would be similar to some Belgian beers, or even the German Altbier, and the hoppiness should tend to be a bit more spicy as opposed to fruity. Like some French brewer found some two year old hops in his hayloft, and decided, what the hell, I'll use them anyway. So then:
Biere de la Voie-
Fermentables-
Belgian Two Row Pale- 7 lbs
Vienna- 2 lbs
Munich Light- 1 lb
Crystal 40L- 3.5 oz- I had actually planned on 8 ounces, but this is what I had in stock. It was more of a coloring addition than for flavor, so no big deal.
Table sugar- 8 oz
Hops-
Fuggle- 1.25 oz- 60 minutes
Mount Hood- 1 oz- 10 minutes
Yeast-
Wyeast 1007 German Ale- 1000 ml starter. This was what Wyeast recommends for Biere De Garde, and I happened to have it to hand, so it worked out nicely.
Mash-
149/168- hot water infusion
Gravity target/actual-
1.058/1.058
Another ho hum brewday. Which is not to say that I didn't enjoy myself. Just that nothing went wrong. I nailed all my temps. I nailed my target gravity. I guess I'm going to have to start writing a little more about why I'm choosing what I am for ingredients, or else I'll have nothing to write about.
As far as the ingredients go, I pretty much went with a standard Biere De Garde grain bill list. Table sugar to dry it out a little. The yeast is not typically a high attenuator, but the low mash temp, along with the sugar should get me to 80%. I'm going to start doing a force fermentation from now on to figure out what my actual terminal gravity will be, but I didn't have the extra yeast to do so this time.
Speaking of the yeast. If you ever decide to use Wyeast 1007, use a blow off tube. I do not have one at the moment, and it went absolutely crazy with this beer, blowing the carboy cap off twice. I suppose I could have tried to harvest the yeast off my pantry floor, but it's probably not the most...ahem...sanitary place to get your brewing yeast. A true top fermenting yeast. On the bright side, our furnace died sometime Saturday night, and the yeast kept working even though the temps strayed down into lager territory. I haven't tasted a beer that I've made with this yet, but I like how it works in a technical sense.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Hohenoelsner Alt
It's a weird time of year for me as a beer brewer. I don't have the space/money/equipment to do very much as far as controlling fermentation temperature is concerned. Yeast, like probably all other biological life forms, have an optimum working temperature, and that differs from strain to strain. It's early November though, and while it's definitely colder now than a month ago, it's not quite cold enough for me to start doing lagers.
I started reading through yeast strain guides (I know. I'm strange. I suspect few people on CTA buses are reading the Wyeast catalog), and discovered that there are some German strains that are particularly well suited to cold ale temps, but don't quit working if it actually drops into lager temp territory. These beers (Koelsch, and Alt) are malt driven German barley ales. They have one hop addition at the beginning of the boil, which is particularly nice given how expensive hops are right now. So the first I'm doing is an Altbier.
Hohenoelsner Alt-
Fermentables-
Belgian Pilsner- 5 lbs- the LHBS didn't have the full 7 pounds of German malt, so I had to substitute some.
German Pilsner- 2 lbs
Dark Munich- 1 lb
Black Patent- 4 ounces- this addition is mainly for coloring
Hops-
Mt Hood- 2 ounces- 60 minutes
Yeast-
Wyeast 1007- German Ale- 1200 ml starter
Mash-
128/149/170- infusions with a traditional decoction mash out
The grain bill itself is a standard looking recipe for a Duesseldorf style Altbier. The hops are decended from the German Hallertauer hop strain, so with that and the German yeast, this isn't too different than what you see in a Rheinland brewery that was brewing an Alt. It should make for a nice malty red colored ale.
Brewing was smooth, as it always is nowadays. I missed my gravity by .002, which I don't feel too bad about. My equipment isn't calibrated down to the quart, so it's hard to get an exact reading as to volumes in the brew kettle.
The yeast was quick to take off, and since I was using a five gallon carboy as a primary, I had to put in a blow off tube, as the starter went bucky. I've never seen so many gigantic chunks of yeast swirling around. The temperature outside dropped at just the right time, so the yeast were held perfectly at 63 degrees.
The name of the beer is named for the tiny village in Germany where I lived for a year back in 1993. It was so small that the cows would walk down the main drag when they moved from the summer pastures to the winter ones.
I started reading through yeast strain guides (I know. I'm strange. I suspect few people on CTA buses are reading the Wyeast catalog), and discovered that there are some German strains that are particularly well suited to cold ale temps, but don't quit working if it actually drops into lager temp territory. These beers (Koelsch, and Alt) are malt driven German barley ales. They have one hop addition at the beginning of the boil, which is particularly nice given how expensive hops are right now. So the first I'm doing is an Altbier.
Hohenoelsner Alt-
Fermentables-
Belgian Pilsner- 5 lbs- the LHBS didn't have the full 7 pounds of German malt, so I had to substitute some.
German Pilsner- 2 lbs
Dark Munich- 1 lb
Black Patent- 4 ounces- this addition is mainly for coloring
Hops-
Mt Hood- 2 ounces- 60 minutes
Yeast-
Wyeast 1007- German Ale- 1200 ml starter
Mash-
128/149/170- infusions with a traditional decoction mash out
The grain bill itself is a standard looking recipe for a Duesseldorf style Altbier. The hops are decended from the German Hallertauer hop strain, so with that and the German yeast, this isn't too different than what you see in a Rheinland brewery that was brewing an Alt. It should make for a nice malty red colored ale.
Brewing was smooth, as it always is nowadays. I missed my gravity by .002, which I don't feel too bad about. My equipment isn't calibrated down to the quart, so it's hard to get an exact reading as to volumes in the brew kettle.
The yeast was quick to take off, and since I was using a five gallon carboy as a primary, I had to put in a blow off tube, as the starter went bucky. I've never seen so many gigantic chunks of yeast swirling around. The temperature outside dropped at just the right time, so the yeast were held perfectly at 63 degrees.
The name of the beer is named for the tiny village in Germany where I lived for a year back in 1993. It was so small that the cows would walk down the main drag when they moved from the summer pastures to the winter ones.
Monday, October 13, 2008
St Phillipe Dubbel, Part two
I was given a copy of The Brewmaster's Table recently. It's got some beautiful photography in it, but that had been about as far as I'd gotten until a week ago. We're having Thanksgiving at our house this year, and it occured to me that it would be the perfect time to start delving into food/beer pairings. And luckily for me, turkey goes best with the types of beer I've been working on brewing the most: Belgians.
My St. Phillipe Dubbel that I did a while back turned out pretty good, but needed some tinkering. I had previously said that I like the Wyeast Abbey Ale II yeast, but having brewed a few beers with it, I kind of revised my opinion. It comes from a Trappist brewery, so it's obvious that you can make good beer with it, but it seemed to bring certain flavors to the fore that I wanted in the background, and vice versa. I had said that my first Saison tasted somehow kind of thin, and I had chalked this up to the large amount of Acidulated Malt that I used, but when I did the Wedding Saison, it had that same sort of alcoholicky banana flavor right up front. They were decent, very drinkable beers, but I wanted something different.
St Phillipe, Part 2-
Fermentables-
Belgian Pilsner Malt- 8 pounds
Vienna Malt- 1 pound
Belgian Aromatic- 8 ounces
Carapils- 8 ounces
Special B- 5 ounces
Dark Candy Sugar- 1 pound
Hops-
Mt Hood- 1 ounce- 60 minutes
Crystal- 1 ounce- 15 minutes
Yeast-
Wyeast Trappist High Gravity- pitched right from the smack pack
Mash-
128/150/167- Hot water infusions with a decoction mash out
So, the recipe itself saw some adjustments from the first St. Phillipe. The main reason was that I was able to actually procure some of the dark candy sugar as opposed to clear, so I substituted the Dark Munich malt with Vienna. The rest of the grains were pretty close, with an extra ounce of Special B. The hops were the same type, but I added an extra quarter ounce of Mt Hood at the 60 minute mark. The yeast is new, and for the first time, I didn't use any sort of starter. Mainly because I completely forgot to. I had read that some Belgian brewers underpitch on purpose, as it gives them some esters that they wouldn't get with the proper amount, so I will have to see how that goes. Again, this beer was done for Thanksgiving, so it'll be two weeks in the primary, two in the secondary, and three in the bottle to condition. It's not as long as I'd like to have it in the bottle before initial consumption, but time was short. I can't wait to see how this one ages, and be able to do a side by side tasting with the first version.
Brewing for me now is basically at the point where I don't need to spend too much time on the technical aspects of the brew day, which is nice. This one went so smoothly that I was able to paint our picnic table while I was brewing. And I still nailed my starting gravity exactly.
My St. Phillipe Dubbel that I did a while back turned out pretty good, but needed some tinkering. I had previously said that I like the Wyeast Abbey Ale II yeast, but having brewed a few beers with it, I kind of revised my opinion. It comes from a Trappist brewery, so it's obvious that you can make good beer with it, but it seemed to bring certain flavors to the fore that I wanted in the background, and vice versa. I had said that my first Saison tasted somehow kind of thin, and I had chalked this up to the large amount of Acidulated Malt that I used, but when I did the Wedding Saison, it had that same sort of alcoholicky banana flavor right up front. They were decent, very drinkable beers, but I wanted something different.
St Phillipe, Part 2-
Fermentables-
Belgian Pilsner Malt- 8 pounds
Vienna Malt- 1 pound
Belgian Aromatic- 8 ounces
Carapils- 8 ounces
Special B- 5 ounces
Dark Candy Sugar- 1 pound
Hops-
Mt Hood- 1 ounce- 60 minutes
Crystal- 1 ounce- 15 minutes
Yeast-
Wyeast Trappist High Gravity- pitched right from the smack pack
Mash-
128/150/167- Hot water infusions with a decoction mash out
So, the recipe itself saw some adjustments from the first St. Phillipe. The main reason was that I was able to actually procure some of the dark candy sugar as opposed to clear, so I substituted the Dark Munich malt with Vienna. The rest of the grains were pretty close, with an extra ounce of Special B. The hops were the same type, but I added an extra quarter ounce of Mt Hood at the 60 minute mark. The yeast is new, and for the first time, I didn't use any sort of starter. Mainly because I completely forgot to. I had read that some Belgian brewers underpitch on purpose, as it gives them some esters that they wouldn't get with the proper amount, so I will have to see how that goes. Again, this beer was done for Thanksgiving, so it'll be two weeks in the primary, two in the secondary, and three in the bottle to condition. It's not as long as I'd like to have it in the bottle before initial consumption, but time was short. I can't wait to see how this one ages, and be able to do a side by side tasting with the first version.
Brewing for me now is basically at the point where I don't need to spend too much time on the technical aspects of the brew day, which is nice. This one went so smoothly that I was able to paint our picnic table while I was brewing. And I still nailed my starting gravity exactly.
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