Daily Archives: June 27, 2010

Duck Rabbit: Brown Ale

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I’ve been wanting to try this Duck Rabbit beer — and I did!  Actually, the first time I tried it was yesterday at the Northern Virginia Summer Brewfest.  They had their Milk Stout available, so I sucked down my 4 ounces in my tester.  It was nice to get a full bottle today — this time of the Brown Ale.

This brewery (located in North Carolina) claims to be “the dark beer specialists”–I think they are.  Both of the dark beers I’ve had from them are good.  The brown ale was spot on — flavor profile, color, aroma, mouthfeel.  It was an excellent beer to savor as I was transferring my homebrew between fermentors.   If you get a chance — try some.

Beer Mentor

Transferring Imperial Walker IPA to Secondary

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Found the time this afternoon to transfer my beer from primary fermentation to secondary.    If you recall, my Original Gravity was 1.081 corrected.  When I transferred it to secondary, the gravity was 1.029 corrected.  So, according to my calculation (via beertools.com) it is sitting at 6.9% ABV right now … I’d like for it to go up a little higher (over 7% would be sweet) but I think the yeast is really stressed.  The higher Final Gravity might make it more of an east coast IPA with a good malt balance.  When I tasted it, I definitely got plenty of hops in the mouth.  I added my 1 oz of Cascade for dry hopping — I’ll probably leave it in secondary for two more weeks and then keg it!  Yes!  It should be good …

1) Here it is waiting for transfer to secondary.  When I popped off the top, you can tell that it was really active — thank goodness for extra room in this bucket!

2) Here’s the next bucket being prepped for secondary.  Since I’m dry hopping, I decided to use a bag to hold the hops and am using a secondary bucket instead of my normal carboy.

3) Here are the hops as I prepare them for secondary fermentation.  I decided to go ahead and dunk them in my sanitation solution on the off chance there might be some wild yeast floating around — oh, and here’s also a picture of some sweet lupulin I lost … darn it.

4) Finally, since I had the time and desire, I decided to capture a few vials of yeast (1056 American Ale) to try and save myself some money.  We’ll see if the alcohol content was too high and suffocated all the remaining yeast.

Beer Mentor