With the gracious help of my wife, we got the IPA and the Kolsch bottled up. These two beers were made out of the same mash, then tweaked with steeping grains as I reported back on my Double Brew Day post.

My kegerator is dead, and has since been hauled out to make more room in my garage. So back to bottling for this devotee of home kegging. I didn’t have any corn sugar on hand, so I just used 3oz of table sugar (sucrose) for my priming agent. I considered using DME, but I wanted the beers to carb up quickly and DME priming can take a little longer than refined sugars. Both beers spent three weeks in primary and were looking nice and clear in the carboy.

Everything went as planned. The IPA had a finishing gravity of 1.014 and the Kolsch was a dry 1.009. I had considered dry hopping the IPA with 2 oz of Cascade, but the aroma from the later hop additions was already great, so I decided to save those Cascades for an American Brown in the near future.

We are certainly looking forward to tasting these two beers once they are ready. As this was the first time I have used Columbus and Centennial hops (IPA), I was pleased with their aroma and flavor. We’ll have to see how the beer is all carbed up and conditioned. I’ll post back with pictures of each beer and a taste review in a couple weeks.

Be sure to look for my next post on using the Better Bottle carboy as I totally forgot about one key factor about them that may have ruined the Kolsch.

Brew ON!