So time flies when you’re raising kids I suppose. Between family and work, my beer brewing hobby hangs on by a thread! I still read books and occasionally go do some judging, of course I still drink commercial beer! But this is a digital journal for beer brewing, and I haven’t done that for a year. Until this past weekend. I suppose it’s the fact that it’s Spring and the Covid crazy is starting to simmer down in our society. Everyone appears to be coming outside again! So as part of Spring cleaning, I completely cleaned out and cleaned up the brewing cave. It’s really nice in there and everything was just waiting to brew a new beer! So that’s what I finally did!

This Hippidy Hoppidy beer is one that I did so well with years back when I was seriously brewing many times per month. People loved it and it did well in competition brewing winning medals at Dixie Cup, Red Stick’s Homebrew competition and some others that slip my mind. So in the interest of starting off with a great one, that’s what I brewed.

The brew day went well. It was May 7th and actually quite a beautiful day. Gravity appeared to be coming in a little low but I had DME and adjusted the hop schedule a little for balance. Original Gravity was around 1.051. I grappled with the refractometer a little and it even has me considering buying a digital refractometer. But in the course of researching it, I think I figured out what I was doing wrong.(hop particles interfering with readings) So I learned something new! A really great day brewing. Cooled to pitch temperature, pitched and added oxygen. Within hours it was visibly fermenting. Added dry hop after 4 days as it looked like it was slowing down on ferment. Final gravity a week later is around 1.0125 for approximately 4.9% ABV. Going to chill it down and take it off the hops/yeast. I’m doing this quicker than I did in the past. Testing a theory around spending too much time on the trub with this sort of ale.

Update 7/14/2022

This beer came out really great. Really nice to drink, lovely hop aroma. I think the alcohol is higher than 5% based on how it makes me feel after 3 or so. It may just be that I really enjoy it and drink it too fast.