Rocky Raccoon's Crystal Honey Lager - Part 3

Rocky Raccoon's Crystal Honey Lager

A variation of a Lager from The Complete Joy of Homebrewing
O.G.:  1.084
F.G.:  1.000
Estimated ABV: ~11.13%

Buster soon after his sabotage attempt

I can barely contain my excitement at the potential of this batch - tasting it tonight and revealed several similarities to the We're In The Garden Belgian White brewed about this time last year. We'll see what happens while it bottle conditions, but I have high hopes for the Rocky Raccoon. The tasting also confirms the high alcohol content indicated by the OG and FG readings. I drank the leftovers from the sample taken to read the FG and had a definitely felt the alcohol's effect after a few minutes.

Tonight I was flying solo while bottling, though Ramius was there to provide his own form of help - mostly sniffing each bottle before I could cap it. The bottling process took about 2 hours total and I was able to get a yield of 45 bottles (~4.22 gallons). The only difficulties in the bottling process were my folks' cat knocking my siphoning equipment onto the kitchen floor, causing me to have to re-sterilize it, and the heather tips blocking up the final siphoning of the beer into the bottle. The auto-siphon was able to filter out quite a bit of the heather, but some of the smaller particles found their way through it and into the beer. I don't anticipate it adding anything but a more robust heather flavoring - a flavor that is naturally subtle and was added to this mild brew so that its character could be featured.

Prepping for the bottling process with bottles provided by David Collins

Palace Bitter & Rocky Raccoon's Honey Lager - Part 2

Palace Bitter
A variation of a Bitter from The Complete Joy of Homebrewing
O.G.:  1.101
F.G.:  n/a

The 2 oz Kent Goldings hops floating on top of the bitter

Rocky Raccoon's Crystal Honey Lager

A variation of a Lager from The Complete Joy of Homebrewing
O.G.:  1.084
F.G.:  n/a

2 oz. heather tips resting at the bottom of the carboy

First, an update about brewing conditions: these batches have been fermenting in a basement that keeps them at about ~86 degrees Fahrenheit. I had a little bit of trouble with the Honey Lager. Specifically, the initial pitching of the yeast yielded no fermentation activity after 36 hours, so I ended up having to run to HopToIt's Denver location and picked up an additional yeast packet. After letting it activate and pitching it into the carboy, fermentation activity was well underway within 24 hours.

Transferring the beers from primary to secondary fermenters went extraordinarily smoothly today. I had no issues in terms of equipment failure or human error, and was able to get both batches swapped over in the period of about 45 minutes (this includes sanitation, dry times, addition of hops/herbs, and the actual racking).

One thing I was initially concerned about was the possibility of contamination when adding the hops/heather to the secondary fermenter. Typically, one doesn't need to worry about contamination when adding hops and other ingredients to the beer because it is boiling and any bacteria that find themselves in that situation perish post haste. It seems that contamination during primary isn't likely as the rigorous yeast activity will most likely out-compete any bacteria that make their way into the fermenter, and it is equally unlikely in secondary due to the alcohol content of the beer and the continued discharge of CO2 from the yeast into the carboy. 

So, we'll see how the brews turn out in a month or so - two more weeks of secondary and then bottle conditioning can't come soon enough!

Post-transfer celebratory beer at a local beer garden