"Don't Get Greedy"

It's hard to believe that it's been 6 days since the start of IPA madness.

After the first 5-7 days, the beer has to be transferred from the original carboy into the second carboy for secondary fermentation. This is a usual next step (not always necessary evidently) for brewing, especially in our case. Since we're brewing beers with lots of stuff in it, we tend to have a lot of sediment. If beer is left in the first carboy for too long with this sediment, it will skunk the beer. So today, Mike assisted me with the transfer which is a basic syphon process. Even though this is only my second time doing this, it's still amazing how much sediment collects on the bottom and top of the carboy.

The number one rule to this process (besides keeping everything sanitary) is not to get greedy. So far, as the picture suggests, I'm a little greedy.

"Beer Greed" noun. a state of mind that leads one to take too much beer from the primary fermentor because one wants to maximize the amount of beer transferred for secondary fermentation.

The issue with beer greed is that you run the risk of drawing up sediment from the bottom of the carboy (spent yeast and all those floaties that you saw in the video). These things are what you were avoiding in the first place by transferring carboys...As a beer lover and hop-head. it's hard to see that little bit of beer left in the bottom of the carboy. In reality, out of a 5 gallon carboy, you will only end up bottling about 4 gallons of finished product. The rest goes down the drain...sad. Still, I'm told that 4 gallons is a lot of beer.

Bye bye beer.

The last thing you do before re-applying the fermentation lock is to take a specific gravity reading. Results below.

Original Gravity (when the beer was first added to the carboy after brewing): 1.074

Specific Gravity (today's reading): 1.021 (final gravity needs to be 1.050-1.080)

Current Alcohol by Volume: 6.7%

Tasting Notes: Oh baby, you can taste those hops.

I'll post about Original, Specific, and Final gravity at a later time...

Cheers! Now I have dishes to do...