BeerBorg

Today I bottled Ralph's Tasmanian Wheat beer. This is my second experiment with hop standing. I took my tool and cracked the lid and got hit HARD with hop aroma. I pulled the lid off and dropped my hydrometer into the fermenter (I used an ale pail for this one) then went upstairs to get my caps, on my way back I got a strong whiff of hops before I got to the top of my stairs. When I got downstairs my entire basement was full of Galaxy hop aroma. I don't know if Galaxy just produce a lot of aroma or if hop standing is vastly superior to dry hopping for aroma. I dipped a sanitized cup in and tasted a sample. The flavor was spot on where I want it but it did have more bitterness than I wanted. I have found in the past that a lot of that bitterness disappears with carbonation. I will find out next week when I try a bottle of it after it is carbonated. I think next time I am going to run my chiller until the wort reaches around 175F, then turn the water to the chiller off and drop the hops in, and let it stand for half an hour from there.

Also I tried something that I thought might be a good way to transfer from one bucket to the other on the same level with my auto siphon. I really did not want to lift a full bottling bucket up with my hip still on the mend. I kept pumping the auto siphon. It worked like a charm, it was faster than gravity feeding, and I had absolutely no issues with any kind of air getting in it. I wish I had dreamed that up before spending $400 some odd dollars on my conical. Ummm no I don't. I love my conical. Nevermind.

I'll drive up sometime mid week and take that conical off your hands......and maybe some beer too.

I hope you're pleased with the results, Roger.

I'm always amazed and impressed at all the different permutations of brewing out there. Here's one more thing we can add to our arsenal. Knowing when to use something like hop stands or FWH or whatever can really make a recipe stand out.

Let us know how the finished product turns out.

The November/December issue of Zymurgy had a very interesting article on late addition hops. They call it Hop Bursting. When I get all of - well, most of - my poop in one sock I'm going to try it with the IPA I'm trying to develop.

Chuck, I did hop bursting with a recent small batch, and I just tasted the first bottle this weekend. Pretty good. Certainly a worthy alternative if you want a shorter brew day.