Hops bags went in two days ago, let’s send this doggy home. There was still some very slight airlock activity and in fairness the FG had dropped a point (maybe two) in two days, but I was also starting to get traces of that sweet & sour taste that somewhat spoilt the last batch so I’m willing to risk having gushers if they’re drinkable. Fingers crossed there’s no bottle bombs though!

As with the batch of Nog I bottled recently I went for batch priming here, racking to a clean vessel after adding 95g of brewing sugar / dextrose, this time dissolved in some boiled water instead of powder in a wet (sanitised) cup. Much easier to deploy. As before my figures came from the Brewer’s Friend Priming Calculator, going for 2.0 vols across 21 litres at 20 ℃. To be honest I think 2.0 vols would be on the low side for a DIPA but at the back of my mind I’m wondering how much more fermentation this beast has in her (the first batch went to 1.009 – 4 points lower – but picked up some nasty flavours) so I want to give her some room for error in case I really do create a caseload of bombs. Mind you, German Wheat Beer tops out at 4.5 vols according to the calculator, so I’m hoping the crown-capped bottles can take that kind of pressure, even if the contents turn into a fountain.

Regardless, 59 Steinies (19.47 litres then – oops!) were bottled and sealed with yellow caps, off to the server room for a couple of days. The instructions actually specify a week in the warm for secondary fermentation (Eh? Thought we were just carbing?) but I don’t want to give those off-flavours any more chance to develop so I’d rather cut that short and give it longer in cold conditioning, maybe even the same 56 days that are demanded by the similar strength Wheat Tripel.