It’s been three whole days (and a bit) since this one was dry-hopped, time to stuff them into bottles.

FG didn’t come down to 1.011 as predicted (managed a comparatively mild 1.016 for 3.68% ABV) which is a pity but airlock activity had ceased and SG was stable for 4 days so it’s not as if I was being premature. Got 7 x 500 ml brown bottles from each FV, added two Fox’s carbonation drops and toped them off with gold crown caps.

First impressions of the taste were good; the dippy one was tasted first straight from the sample jar after taking a reading (huge head!) and had a cloudy consistency with nicely rounded mouth-feel, but also a tiny little bit of twang, which I’m hoping will dissipate with ageing. The hoppy one was tested towards the end of bottling when I didn’t have enough to complete another 500 ml brown bottle, so I drank the dregs instead. Much better taste than the un-hopped version, same mouth-feel but also great if simple aroma of hops with no noticeable twang.

Not sure if it was the hops that I need to thank or if the twang was due to something I did differently with the other vessel, but this half of the experiment was definitely the winner. Next time around I’ll add finishing hops to the whole batch, and may play around with more than one type and / or adding it at different stages.