Building a Winter Warmer #2

First, a link back to the original post for reference and so people can see the recipe if they so desire.

From where I left off, it’s time to add the hops in. At the beginning of the boil, it’s one ounce of Centennial hops, then with twenty minutes left I added in another half ounce of Centennial. These are pretty bitter hops but I’m trying to keep their influence to a minimum. With only 20 minutes left to go, the half ounce should do more for the aromas of the beer than the flavors.

With only ten minutes left in the boil I added in the spices. I upped the spices for this batch because when I made the Later Winter Warmer, the spices weren’t too prominent. I’d like to be able to taste the flavors I’m putting in the beer, otherwise what’s the point?

Once sixty minutes have passed, I take the pot down to the basement to cool it down. This takes about ten to fifteen minutes with a wort chiller. Once that’s done, I start to pour the beer from the pot into a carboy through a strainer and funnel setup to filter out the hops and any leftover grain.

Nice huh. This happens sometimes, but still. Wow. Not what I was expecting. I’m not worried about the bug; it was dead before it went into the boil and a full boil should be enough to kill anything, with alcohol getting everything after that. But still…

(If you can’t quite see the bug, it’s in near the center, just off to the left.)

Anyway, at this point I add water to the wort until I have about five gallons, dump the yeast in and let it sit. It doesn’t look like much at first, but later on it starts to pick up steam.

All that fluffy white looking stuff at the top is the yeast in action. At the bottom, that faint stripe of light brown is all the other elements of the wort settling out, including the dead yeast. Next week, I’ll talk about putting it into secondary with more kinda gross looking photos!