Brewing this weekend?

You're a little warm for a lager.

 

Nah. Cold as Eis. <ba-dum-bum>

 

Brewed a light Summer Blonde w/ lemon peel yesterday, kegged my all Simcoe IPA that I brewed on fathers day, and racked my KBS Clone to secondary on the woodford reserve barrel wood, cocoa nibs, and kona coffee. Smelled, and tasted friggin GOOD!

 

Brewing a Moose Drool clone tonight while my wife steals the tv with the Bachelorette. My in-laws used to live in Montana and we drank a lot of MD. I haven't had it in 3 years so I'm really excited. Got my recipe listening to Big Sky's brewmaster on CYBI.

 

Moving our (w/ orangevango) IPA/Strong ale to secondary and preparing to dry hop. Anyone dry-hopped with whole hops before?

 

I have dry hopped with whole cone Citra before.. I really think it's the best way to dry hop. I just stole a sample of my all simcoe IPA I did, and did 2 additions of Simcoe pellets, and while I got the same effect, I just like the whole cone stuff.

However, two issues with the whole cone. If you use a glass secondary, depending on what YOU want to do, it's easier to put a mesh bag, sanitized obviously, in the neck, and feed in the hop cones one by one. Knot it off, and drop it in. It'll float, but will soak up the beer and sorta sink. People argue that it needs to sink, but as long as it's all wet, I think it's doing it job. You could drop something heavy like marble in there if need be. To get them out, just rack out of the carboy, and then I used a knife to cut the muslin bag open, and washed the hops out until I could remove them all. PITA, but nothing huge.

The other, is the sheer amount of beer that 1oz sucked up was amazing. They expand and literally drink your damn beer before you can. You'll lose some volume there, but again.. It happens with trub, and hops sludge when you move from primary to secondary, and secondary to bottle/keg.

With that out there.. I think whole cone are fun to use. I think you get a brighter flavor from them, personally.