This evening, after a long period of inactivity (excepting the enjoyment of a beer now and again), I bottled the Nut Brown Ale we brewed on August 29 (original gravity of 1.052). It was racked to secondary on September 13, with a gravity of 1.020. The gravity upon bottling three weeks later: 1.020. Oh, well. The ABV is 4.3%.
I’m looking forward to it: it’s a nut brown ale with actual nuts in it (based on the Radical Brewing recipe, we added a cup of mashed walnuts to the mash). I bottled it with 1 1/4 cups of light DME, which I’d planned to use in bottling the Smoked Porter that we brewed on September 19 – but that had a gravity of 1.022 which is about 10 points higher than the recipe guidelines. I put it in the secondary instead (luckily, I had another batch of beer to bottle); if things go to plan, it’ll have a gravity of 1.022 in two or three weeks. I thought more time had passed since it was brewed — should have looked at my brewing journal.
Everything worked out though, and both beers tasted mighty good when I tested the gravity — the Smoked Porter does have a nice bit of smoke to it – and it’s pretty robust: just this side of a stout, I think.
I’m enjoying a Krameria Estates Oktoberfest while entering this post; it turned out quite lovely, I think. Been enjoying a lot of Oktoberfest from a lot of breweries as of late; it’s a mighty good beer this time of year. We went to Deutschland Tag at Helga’s last weekend — much Paulaner Oktoberfest was enjoyed (and we got to keep the .5L steins!), and Jasper behaved himself somewhat.
At a booth at Deustchland Tag, I found out about a German language class that meets every Monday evening very close to our neighborhood — that’ll have to wait until we get back from vacation.
This Krameria Oktoberfest is much more drinkable than it was a couple of weeks ago — I’m pretty happy with it.