The Porter is in a Keg

After letting the specific gravity drop to 1.020, I've decided to keg the porter. The extra few weeks with the lager yeast seems to have helped. I'm happy with the way it's turned out, once the CO2 is balanced out (I hit it hard with pressure so I could tap it 6 hours later when friends came over) it will be the perfect brew to tide me over until spring. I'll post the recipe soon.

Like a good day skiing...

...my Pine Tar Porter requires a pair...of yeasts? Named for the sticky malt extract like substance I use to recondition my wooden skis for the first snow of winter, my porter has been given another yeast; a lager yeast this time. I've been bitten by this lagering bug, and I've just read the book Brew Like a Monk. Those Belgian beers often use more than one yeast, so I feel like I'm in good company. After transferring my dunkel, I swirled the protein/yeast sludge and poured about a cup of it into my keg with my porter, which I've decided (and confirmed) is too sweet. I've rigged up a blow off tube from the CO2-in peg into a Scotch bottle with sanitizer solution added (I recommend single malt scotch bottles for experiments such as these, it's well worth the investment). The dunkel's Brix has dropped to 8.6 and still fermenting well after the transfer. We shall see about the porter/dark lager.

I'm going to lager my ale

What makes a good beer? Tradition? Ingredients? Knowledge? Of course, all of these go into a good beer. My first brew of 2008, Pine Tar Porter, is almost a great beer. I say almost because its still too sweet. The yeast is slow if not stopped (it's White Labs Cal V that I saved in the fridge after 2 batches) The SG is 1.022 if it was at 1.015 this beer would be great. So, I'm going to try something new: When I transfer my dunkel tomorrow I'm going repitch the porter with the lager yeast from the dunkel primary and see if it will balance it out. I'll keep you posted...