It’s been 9 days since this pup started fermenting, and it was after nine days that I added those finishing hops last time around, not knowing that there was still 17 days left to go before it would stabilise enough to bottle. I also didn’t know that 17 days of dry-hopping would produce some nasty grassy flavours, so I’m understandably keen to not repeat the same mistake.
Still, there’s airlock activity which means there’s CO2 being produced, and I can risk a cheeky gravity check with a sanitised turkey baster. The previous brew measured 1.014 at this point, and although I didn’t take any photos I think I had yet to figure out that you need to let the level drop a bit in the trial jar before taking a reading as that can affect things, and almost led to a 2 point difference being recorded on my first Wherry.
Anyway, I’m fairly certain we’re at 1.015 right now, so still not quite at the 1.010 – 1.014 level that we need for bottling. If this is like the last attempt, can we also expect it to drop to 1.009, or was that a consequence of hop bags being in so long and propping up a fermentation which would otherwise have settled down? Who knows. Either way we need to drop some more, and we need stability, otherwise I’m not even going to think about dry-hopping, let alone bottling. Let’s check back in a couple of days.