My parents guestroom REEKS!

...like hoppy GOODNESS...I LOVE IT!

Brewed a 6 gallon batch of IIPA Monday, added 5lbs of honey last night, going to rack it to secondary under another oz of whole leaf citra next Fri/Sat.

Last time I brewed the last version of this beer it stuck and didn't ferment through all the way due to low oxygenation I think. The secondary ferm "boiled over" through my airlock and the beer ended up way sweeter than was pleasant. This time I tried olive oil in the wort, and added the honey 4 days in instead of during the boil to let the yeast get toughened up and ready for all those simple sugars.

Here's a couple pics, one of my recipe pulled from iBrewmaster and one of the OG reading from brew day sans honey. I think it says 1.080'ish but I'm not absolutely sure. To tell you the truth I've always been a little confused about what my hydrometer was trying to tell me...

Looks like 1.081 or maybe 1.082. Hard to tell from the angle.

Well that's a little off but not too bad I guess. When I pull honey from the recipe iBrewmaster says the gravity should be 1.075, maybe there was a little less water than there should have been on brew day.

Reading through the base of the meniscus,it's about 1.084.

And a bottle of Southern Tier 2XIPA in the background! Nice choice!

Oh yeah, love those guys! Was drinking that and these last night:

1.084 is 10 points higher than it was supposed to be! Will be interesting to see what the FG will end up being...

The hydrometer is also floating near the side. If it's bumping against it you could have drag throwing you off in either direction.

Best practice for reading a hydrometer:
1. Degas (pour rapidly between two cups) a 60'F sample, end up in your test jar.
2. Float hydrometer. Plunge up and down an inch to dislodge any air bubbles that were carried in. Give a little spin. Orient test jar so that hydrometer is free floating.
3. Read. Through the miniscus or on top doesn't really matter as long as YOU are consistent. Reading through is better practice as the presence of alcohol can affect surface tension, which affects how high the miniscus will climb. This is not really significant as error is +-1 sg

Yeah,the difference is small,but it is excepted practice to read through the meniscus for the proper reading. Also saw on NBC this morning that they caught the younger of the two marathon bombers in your town. Hope you & yours are ok man.

Excellent! I'll get a good final gravity reading post secondary.

Yeah, I went into Cambridge yesterday morning to work and they had pretty much shut the city down, jobsite included so I went back home. Sounds like that kid took a bullet during the big firefight around 2am and was in that boat pretty much from then until they dragged him out of it last night. Crazy, crazy stuff! Thanks man!

You're welcome. I saw a pic on NBC this morning when they cuffed & stuffed him,bleeding through the nose it looked like. They greased his older brother though. They try to blow up the man cave where my fermenter stand is,there's gunna be trouble. I have the firepower...

You just don't mess with a guys man cave!

The whole exchange went down less than a mile from my place. It was a hairy 18 hours. If only I had grabbed that extra can of LME I could have brewed the Lockdown Brown, bottled in bombers of course!

Yeah, I'm definitely glad it's over, stoked you're safe.

So you work at modern homebrew? I've been in there a few times. I live in Brentwood NH but I'm a union carpenter out of the local 40 in Cambridge so I stop by modern every so often. It's one of my 3 LHBS's (A&G in Portsmouth, ME Brewing supply in Portland and Modern in Cambridge). I wish everyone offered weigh your own hops like you guys instead of 1, 4, or 16oz pre packaged. Sometimes you need a half oz, sometimes you need 10oz and I hate open hop packets just sitting around oxidizing.

Yeah,I'm stuck doing partial packets today. But the saved portions will be used for dry hop in a couple weeks,so it's all good.

I usually tend to make IIPA's so I generally just say screw it and throw all of the hops I got into the boil, or at flameout. Now I just modify my recipes to reflect throwing everything I am buying in ahead of time so I feel better about sticking to the recipe

Beer is coming along nicely...just took it down to the basement for a second week of secondary/dry hopping at 52 degrees constant from upstairs which has been 64'ish. Here's a pic from last weekend and one from this weekend.

DerCribben said:

Beer is coming along nicely...just took it down to the basement for a second week of secondary/dry hopping at 52 degrees constant from upstairs which has been 64'ish. Here's a pic from last weekend and one from this weekend.

Click to expand...

Wow that looks good! Hops almost coming out the top! Yum!

Oh yeah, there's an oz of whole leaf citra sitting up there yumming up my beer. I'm pretty stoked to dig into it end of next week!