On Friday, Will and I transferred the porter from fermentation bucket to carboy. This was the first transfer we had done and it went pretty well. The siphon was pretty easy to use and filtered out a ton of the yeast (I was shocked how much yeast was in that bucket). The carboy is now pretty clear, and this second round of settling should filter it even further. We will be bottling the porter this weekend. We sampled a bit of the beer and it’s coming out a lot better than any of us had hoped. Our initial goal was just to make something drinkable that had alcohol, but this exceeded that by quite a bit, and it’s not even done.
We were also surprised at the temperature of the beer. Due to the conditions we are brewing in, we figured that we would be fermentinging a bit hot – around 76 F. The wet towel trick worked wonders – the beer was fermenting at 68 F, which is perfect for an ale like this.
Then on Sunday, Dan, Will and I brewed our second beer – a pale ale. This brewing went much more smoothly and we fixed the mistakes that were made during the porter brewing. The biggest mistake that we made with the porter was pouring the hot wort into warm water, so it took a long time to cool to 90 F, and during this time the yeast was just sitting out and the bucket was open. This was a lot of time for infection to incur, and wasn’t good on the yeast. This time, we poured the hot wort into cold water, and it was almost immediately at 70 F and ready for the yeast to be pitched.
I’m looking forward to the bottling this weekend. We will see just how clear the beer is, and get another taste to find out how it is doing. Of course, until it has been in the bottle for a few days, it is still flat beer, and warm to boot, but it is still a good indicator of how it will taste in the end.