Beer With Fritz: Dry Hopping in the Secondary

How to make a Kit Beer...Part Two

Racking to the Secondary and Dry Hopping!!

So my original plan was to transfer te beer to the secondary yesterday (Sunday the 25th) BUT...

I ended up cutting downa storm damaged 35' cyprus tree from my front yard, adn that took ALL afternoon! But thanks to My Wife and Daughter and Best Friend Eric Watkins, it went pretty easy (even though the chain saw ran out of chain oil and stopped working until we put more in ;) )

OK, back to the Beer!

(stay on topic...stay on TOPIC!)

From the title you can see I am using some new words in ou Beer Brewing discussion. So lets quickly go over what the heck I am talking about.

Lets see, we have Racking, Secondary, Dry Hopping...and later on Trub...

First...Racking:

Racking is the act of transfering via siphoning your beer through a tube and in my case, to another fermentor.

Second...Secondary:

The secondary fermentor is another fermentation bucket that you transfer your young beer (yes it is now beer and not wort) into.

Third Dry Hopping:

Dry Hopping is where you place Hop Cones (in this case Casecade Whole leaf) in a muslin bag and drop it int the Secondary for 4-7 days. What this does is impart an incrediable amount of aroma to the final beer. Since we are not boiling the Hops, no bitterness comes out of these leaves.

Finally....Trub:

Trub is the crap left at the bottom of your Primary (AKA..you first fermentor) It is mainly dead and dormant yeast cells. Thi sis what you DO NOT want to transfer into your secondary!

OK, now for a pictorial...

Here we have the young beer in the Primary Fermentaion Vessal.

and here is the whole leaf Cascade Hops

note: before I open up the primary I completely sanatized the secondary bucket and all the tubing for the racking.

Below you can see through the side of the primary, the trub and fermentation leftovers on the inside

YUCK!

Now I open the bag with the hops in it and place them into the muslin bag..

Now that I have the hops into the bag, I tie the end in a knot, and she is ready to go!

Now I remove the lid from the Primary.....OH MY GOD!!! ITS SMELLS SOOOOOOO GOOD!!

Now I fill my transfer tubing is purifed water and begin to Rack!!

Now I present you with a much cleaner young beer!!

and left over in the Primary is the Trub and Crap!

Now its time for the addition of the Dry Hops!

A quick reading of my Hydrometer.....

WAIT A MINUTE!! What's a Hydrometer?

A Hydrometer measures the amount of residual matter in a liquid. At 70 degrees F, Water have a reading of 1.000. The more "Sugar" left in the Wort or Beer lets you measure, over time, what the % of Alcohol in the Beer.

Soooo, I started with a reading of 1.058 and now...

(I know its hard to see) its 1.012 which gives me about 4.6% alcohol.

OK, I place the lid on and reatatch the air lock on the secondary.

Moving the secondary to my fermentation spot, ill allow it to sit until next Sunday, at which point I will pull out the hops and take another hydrometer reading. If it is again 1.012 then it will be ready to transfer into a keg. If it has dropped some more, that means the yeast is still making more alcohol. If that is the case then I will close it up and let it sit for another week. The ntake another reading. What you want is an unchanged reading over a weeks time. That generally indicates that the beer is ready.

So ..next time on Beer with Fritz....is it ready?

Stay Tuned!!

PROST!!!