Brewer's Chores

For this snow day, I decided to kick back and take paid time off - used the time to take care of some brewing chores that had been waiting.

First thing, I bottled my Cascade IPA on Friday, taking notes on the gravity readings.  Since I lost a lot of data when my old computer crashed recently, I needed to find a new alcohol by volume (ABV) calculator, and I did, using it to calculate the results of the Cascade IPA.  By the way, since that is conditioning in the bottle right now and I'm estimating that it will be ready on April 15, I am calling it "Tax Day IPA."

The temperature corrected original gravity on this one was 1.051.  It finished up at a final gravity of 1.013 - so I'm giving it a 4.99% ABV.  That is paired up with an international bitterness unit (IBU) measurement of 55.3, all from Cascade hops, including 3 ounces of Luray local hops from fellow grower Bill.

My second errand was to strain off the bitter orange/coriander tincture I've been making for "La Petite Orange" - the Belgian Dubbel I posted about last week.  That orange peel is difficult to work with - it absorbed a lot of the vodker and I could not extract it.  I'll go with what I was able to strain off - maybe two ounces - and I'll just add that at bottling time.

My third and last chore was to move La Petite Orange to secondary.  It's been percolating downstairs since last weekend, but primary fermentation has finally ended.  Two weeks or so in secondary, and I'll bottle it with the tincture mixed in.