RACKING: Wheat Date Ale

Featuring: The Return of Pictures!  I have the pictures for the last couple of beer posts as well, I just haven't had time to rewrite them recently.



Today was a little more complicated than most racking days because I'm using oak.  I actually have a little cask from a friend who ages his own whiskey, but I'm working on a special recipe to put in that.  Instead I used dark-toasted Hungarian oak chips, which in addition to the high vanillin content are generally reputed to add subtle hints of coffee, chocolate, black pepper, and leather.  I chose them partially because I really like those descriptors (especially for this beer), and partially because they were one of the only labeled packages in a box of miscellaneous oak types for $1.99 each.





I decided to use 25 grams of oak, a little under an ounce, because this is a pretty light beer and I don't want to overwhelm it.  It should still be enough to be noticeable after two weeks in the secondary, though.

Note that it actually says the correct weight now!

I finally noticed the button that resets
'0' on my scale.

Since this isn't (unless the starting gravity was way off what I calculated - remember I broke my hydrometer) a particularly high alcohol beer, I had to sanitize the oak chips to avoid introducing any bacteria into the secondary.  I didn't want to add extra flavours apart from the oak, or to spend money on a bottle of vodka, so I decided to nuke them in the microwave with a little bit of water.




Meanwhile, I had to clean and sanitize the carboy, syphon, and all my other bits and pieces.  I've changed up my process here, using OxyClean and Star San now rather than Sparkle Bright and Iodophor, just because it's been a while since some of this stuff has been used, and some has never been used before, and I wanted to make sure it was pristine for this batch.  A bit of work, but worth it.




Once everything was clean, before hauling out the primary, I transfered my sanitized oak into the carboy.  Unfortunately, being light and wet, oak stuck all over the top and neck of the carboy, and I needed to rinse it down in to where the beer would be.  The only guaranteed sanitary liquid I had to do so with was a bottle of whiskey, so it turns out I might as well have sanitized the chips that way to begin with.

Actually, I probably used less whiskey this way.

And this stuff really is too good to be putting in beer.

Finally ready!  I hauled the bucket up on to the counter and took a sample with my new "wine theif", a clever tool that takes beer in from the bottom but won't let it back out unless pressed in a certain way.  Much nicer for taking hydrometer readings with.  I also bought a new hydrometer, of course.

1.012, down from an estimated 1.052, means about 5.3% alcohol.

The little valve on the base of the wine thief also makes it
easy to take a (yeasty) little glass to taste.

The flavour at this point is pretty good.  Pretty sweet, which I'm guessing means the date sugars weren't all fermentable, and there are some of those banana esters you get when you ferment wheat beers at high temperatures; it's been about 25 degrees C or so here, and I have no temperature control at the moment.  (Next time I'm brewing in warm weather I think I'll put together a swamp cooler.)  The banana isn't too strong anyway, and I think the date flavour is somewhat detectable as well so they combine pretty nicely.  Once it's picked things up from the oak as well I think this is going to be a really pleasant beer, one I wish I'd had ready for summer instead of fall.

Finally, I primed the syphon, and started transferring.  I took a couple of videos to give you an idea of how exciting this process actually is.

And that's it!  I installed the airlock, moved it back to the brewing closet, and now I just have two weeks to wait before bottling, and a couple of weeks after that for it to be ready to drink!  I think I'll hold off on bottling the Sarcastic Doorman until after this is done; the more time it gets the better, probably.




(NB - I apologize if the formatting of this post is screwed up.  Blogger seems to be having a lot of problems, it took me ages just to make it look presentable at all.)