Last night I bottled up the harvest ale.  This is the beer that I dry hopped using the hops I grew last summer.  Racking it from the carboy to the bottling bucket was easy.  I thought that maybe the whole hops would clog the siphon, but it was clog free.

As for cleaning the carboy with all the whole hop flowers sitting in the bottom of it, I was able to remove them all fairly easily.  I filled the spent carboy with water, about a 1/4 of the way up. I swirled this mixture around and was able to get the majority of them out on the first try.  I repeated this process 2 more times and got them all out.

The color of the beer was lighter than I expected.  I thought I would get away with submitting it as an American Amber but it appears more like a Pale ale to me.

I poured a glass to see if I could smell any hops aroma, which was the reason that I dry hopped in the first place.  There may have been a hint of hops aroma but I think I will wait until the beer carbonates before I make a judgment on the aroma.

I didn’t taste any yeast tartness as described by other brewers who used this yeast strain (WLP008).  It was still a little cloudy but much clearer than when I racked it from primary.

There was some “funny” malt sweetness that I tasted.  I picked it up in a few swigs but all the tastes ended with refined hop bitterness.  Definitely lots of hops flavor in this one.

In two weeks, we’ll taste it again and report the findings.  Until then, brew on.