I let my dry hops sit in the fermentor for five days before moving on with my bottling. I was also out of town for the first four days so it was easy waiting. I checked my gravity the day before I bottled and my FG ended at 1.013 which is right in the right range. The extra hops added a nice bite to the back end and rounded out the flavor nicely. I wasn’t sure about leaving the oak chips in from the boil but I did and there wasn’t any off flavors but there also wasn’t a ton of oak flavor but the amount the kit gave me wasn’t too much so I’ll see if the flavor is more prevalent from the bottle.
I ended with slightly under five gallons after the samples for readings. I managed to clean and prep just the right number of bottles. My collection used to bottle is quite a mix of tall and short 12oz, a few 22oz, as well as my dozen 22oz flip top. I boxed what I could and put them all in the chest freezer fermentation chamber for bottle conditioning. I’m really happy with how the beer has seemed to turn out so far and since I wasn’t as pleased with the previous few batches I can’t wait to try these out when they are ready.
I also can’t wait to get started on my next batch. I still have a Boston Lager kit I need to make, but I think I will hang on to that and get working on the newly released White House recipes. I’ll need to find a good place to pick up local honey as both recipes call for one pound of honey but I was still glad they use partial grain recipes so I can make them with my current setup.
I think I will get working on the porter and have it ready for this winter. Also I could pass them out among people in the newsroom to help deal with election season stress.