Tasting Time!

I  now have two cases of Red Ale to drink. The time from bottling is now over two weeks, so I will stick a couple of them in the refrigerator to get them good and cold, and on Friday evening, I will crack open a cold bottle and do a taste test. I have to go to the store and pick up a couple of commercial Red Ales for comparison. I will get Killian's, which is a tasty brew. I had a couple on this past St. Patrick's Day, kind of going along with the whole Irish theme. The other will be Red Tail. The plan will be to blindfold my brewmeistress and official taster, Shannon, and put three Reds, in glasses, in front of her, and see which one she likes best.

I also want to get started on my next IPA, which I want to do this weekend. I just need to go buy a kit, and get the equipment out. The amount of work involved is a real deterrent.. However, the weather is cool, and that makes  good time for fermentation to take place.

Racking is a term for taking the wort out of one container and putting it in another container. The first container can be a brew kettle, a carboy, or a keg. Usually, I don't try to pour the wort or the beer itself from one five-gallon container to another. It is better to use a siphon, in my opinion. I went out and bought a new siphon, because my old one was developing a few cracks. It wasn't leaking or anything, just a tiny fracture. My old siphon is the type known as an auto-siphon, which has a valve that only lets the liquid go one way. I like an auto-siphon. I bought a stainless steel siphon of the non-auto-siphon type, which turned out to be a problem for me. I can't figure out how to start the fluid moving. I went back to using the old siphon.

The siphon lifts the brew to a plastic tube which acts as the siphon hose, in the same way that you siphon gas out of  ca for your lawnmower. I found out that I can get the tubing at a Home Depot or Lowe's. It is important to change the tubing for the sake of cleanliness, and some people have told me they use new tubing every time they rack. I'm okay with every third time, once for the trip from the kettle to the carboy, then for moving to the second carboy, and the third time for moving the beer to a keg or bottling bucket.

Coming up: Taste test results.