Secondary Fermentation

On Thursday, I noticed the krausen had fallen on my homebrew, so I decided Friday would be the day to siphon it into the secondary. I didn’t take a gravity reading due to my first one being off (I didn’t mix the wort with the added water prior to taking my reading, so my OG is not reliable). I did try the beer though. It is comfortably bitter and still a bit yeasty. I’m looking forward to the dry hops adding a bit more nose.

I was pretty obsessed with avoiding oxygenating the beer as much as possible, so it took me a while to get going. I left a ton of sediment in the bottom of the primary. Unfortunately, it was soggy sediment. Dumping that meant dumping potential beer! Oh well. I suppose it is for the good of the batch. It is nice, the occasional gurgle of my airlock drawing my attention to my developing baby brew in the corner. I can’t help but stick my nose up to it in order to take in the wonderful scent of hops. I have a feeling these next few weeks are going to go by pretty slowly.

To kill the time, I’ve started thinking about my next homebrew. My original intent was to brew an Imperial Stout. However, my wife made a good point:

“Why won’t you brew something that I’d drink?”

So, it looks like I’m brewing a witbier. Probably the most satisfying feeling about brewing your own Belgian White (other than the satisfaction gleaned from brewing a great beer) is the knowledge that no lemon or orange will ever tarnish your effort.

Here’s a picture of some beer:

Later.

~ by lotofsnow on October 8, 2007.