Finishing hops were added two days ago, time to get this into a couple of kegs and some bottles! I used my original bottling cane throughout, filling one 5 litre mini keg followed by as many bottles as I could, then repeating the process for the other variant. Managed to package 15 bottles in total;
- 7 black crown caps of dry-hopped ale, and
- 8 silver crown caps using Hot French Randall.
The dry-hopped ale went first and looked as well as smelled like you’d expect, but the HFR variant had practically no aroma at all, and when I tasted some it reminded me of a traditional bitter rather than a pale ale. To be fair it was warm, young and not carbonated, but I was hoping for some more hoppiness right from the outset. I had a quick taste of the dry-hopped variant too, but that was from the slops bucket where I’d primed the racking cane, so there may have been a trace of sanitiser mixing things up. Still, I’m almost tempted to say it tasted better than HFR, but that would be unfair.
The bottles are now up in the server room digesting the 5 ml of dextrose that was added during bottling, along with a pre- and post-fill blast of CO2 from the line, because why not. Let’s give them a week in the warm before turfing them out to the garage for conditioning.
Both kegs meanwhile are in the beer fridge, temperature somewhere between 5 and 7 degrees, pressure cranked to 13 PSI since I’ve also got Twisty Listy in there and want to enjoy that without a foam party on each pour.
