Monday, March 24, 2008

Beer: Digby IPA Finally Bottled!

After a wonderful Easter Dinner over at Rod and Jess's place last night, we jetted home to finally bottle our Digby IPA, homebrew batch #2. You may remember that we racked this beer almost two weeks ago! That's a big longer than I meant it to sit, but Charlie Papazian mentions in The Complete Joy of Homebrewing:

Quite honestly, for one reason or another, I often don't get around to bottling for 4 to 6 weeks. So it is important for me to use closed fermentation and a second fermenter. I'm quite pleased with my results.

I assume I've basically moved some of the aging time from post- to pre-carbonation. I hope my results are good. Here's a look at the Digby working up some carbonation:
The Grand Caw is lonely without Digby nearby, bubbling sweet nothings:
As of tonight, this beer has been steadily fermenting for 14 days. The first two beers I made only took 5 or 6 days on primary fermentation. The directions indicate that it should be racked when the air lock bubbles at a rate of 2 to 3 minutes. I timed it at about 2:10 tonight, so we'll probably rack it tomorrow.

3 comments:

rodney said...

Entirely off topic, but what was the bar you recommended out in the Rochester area? I was going to email our friend out there and see if he had heard of it.

CorrND said...

MacGregors on Jefferson Rd (there are apparently other locations, but I've never been to them):

http://www.ratebeer.com/Place/new-york/rochester/macgregors-grill-and-tap-room/1127.htm

I haven't actually been there since Christmas 2006 and some of the comments seem to indicate that the quality has declined.

Erik Huntoon said...

As a homebrewer myself, you can leave a beer in the secondary for a good long time. I have my Amarillo Amber that is now about 6 weeks in the secondary. Was supposed to be bottled about 3 weeks ago but I decided to start kegging.. unfortunatey I ordered supplies from the slowest site on the internet apparently and still don't have a keg to put this beer into. Happy brewing! :-)