Bottling day. 43 12 oz bottles of American Cream Ale. A low yield (generally, you expect around 50 bottles from a 5 gallon batch) but it’s tasty already, even in its current warm and uncarbonated state. I dry hopped (tossed in to the secondary fermenter) an entire chopped vanilla bean. It’s unexpectedly fun. In my initial taste, you get the malt character (mellow, because of the flaked maize), then a straight ahead hop bitterness, and then a slowly emerging vanilla note which eclipses the hops as the flavor lingers. My mouth ended up tasting of vanilla for several minutes afterwards. Can’t wait to see how it ages.
Right now in the basement I’ve got:
* 43 Cream Ales (12oz)
* 16 imperial stout (12oz)
* 12 assorted ciders (16oz)
* 4 “tongue splitters” (16oz). This was my experiment with the extremes of hoppiness. Woot!
* 12 Belgian Triples (16oz), which should be aging nicely by now.
* 2 Nut Brown (16oz)
* An assortment of “birth announcement” ales and lagers from the Mighty Hammer Brewery.
Seems like it might be time for a tasting, or at least a party.
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