IPA Bottled, Wheat Tapped

Robert and I bottled the rest of the IPA last week. Although we can actually fit all three kegs in the refrigerator, that doesn't leave room for the CO2, so it's really not very practical. It was good to empty one of the kegs.

We filled eleven 22 oz. bottles and two 12 oz. bottles. The latter are for entry in the upcoming homebrew competition at the Evergreen State Fair. We're now down to five bottles of the IPA on site here.

The wheat beer has been tapped. I'm not too impressed with it. It doesn't taste bad, but it seems to fall short of what a good wheat beer should be. It doesn't seem to want to accept enough carbonation, and the head retention is not that good. It almost seems closer to a commercial American lager than a wheat beer. Despite any shortcomings with regard to style guidelines, it's still a refreshing summer brew. A little lemon is a welcome addition.

Wheat Ale Kegged

Kegged the two batches of wheat ale yesterday. Here they are en route to their next abode:




Despite the odd extended fermentation, I think the Weihenstephan batch may turn out OK. It still has a rather sour taste, but that seemed to diminish quickly as the sample of proto-brew breathed over an hour or so.

We barely have room in the refrigerator for all three of our kegs, and they are each almost full. There are probably over 13 gallons of fresh homebrew being kept cold on site now.



I can hardly wait to taste a fresh, crisp wheat ale straight from the keg on one of these hot summer days!

Fermentation Problem?

I'm a little worried about batch #4, the wheat beer using Weihenstephan yeast. The fermentation had slowed down to a normal level before I racked last Sunday, but since then it seems to have increased. There is a good layer (half an inch or so) of krausen in the carboy.

The gravity at racking was a little high (1.017), but this much fermentation after 11 days is like nothing I've seen before. The proto brew had a bit of an off taste too, I thought. We'll just have to wait and see how it turns out, I guess.

Fortunately, batch #5 with the American yeast seems to be performing more or less as expected. It's a little active too, but nothing like #4.

Here's what the brews looked like just after racking:




Here's how they looked yesterday:



That's a lot of krausen in the carboy!

New Brews

Despite the lack of posts, there's been a lot happening at Denny Creek Brewing. I guess we've just been too busy to post!

Our third batch, a variation on the Hopitat IPA, just passed a week in the keg. This time we used the 1098 British Ale yeast instead of the 1028 London. Had the first sip on Sunday evening. A prodigious brew!

The weekend before last we brewed our first wheat beer and our first 10 gallon batch! We invested in a new brew kettle that morning and decided to go for it. This will be batches #4 and #5. We split the boiled wort between two 5 gallon fermenters and used Weihenstephan yeast in one and American in the other. More details to come as the brew progresses.

Welcome!

Welcome to the official Denny Creek Brewing blog!

Unlike my personal brewing blog, JBrog, I don't think we'll be publishing brewing notes directly to this blog. That was always a bit more of a chore than it should have been. Normally I log ongoing events and data for a batch of brew in a text file as the brew progresses, then I would transcribe the completed notes to a blog post.

Rather than transcribing the text file, the new plan is to post the text file directly to the server. Then, we can link to it from a page on the main web site. Also, we can add a post here with a link.

This should make the brewing notes better organized and make it easier to find information about a specific batch.

Also in the spirit of better organization, we're planning to number our batches. Batch #1 was the Amber Ale, batch #2 the Hopitat IPA.

Look for another post soon as our little brewing operation continues to evolve!