After much positive feedback, my last cream ale (Batch #23) seemed to finally hit the mark I was aiming for. Last time I brewed 10 gallons. The first 5 gallons I took one vanilla bean, cut in half, scrapped out insides, chopped up case, then soaked in vodka for a couple of hours. I pitched that into the secondary for 2 weeks.
That batch only ended up having hints of vanilla, they were too subtle. So with the second 5 gallon batch I decided to use two vanilla beans. I had also noticed while tasting the previous 5 gallons at one week the vanilla was stronger than two weeks. This time I did the two beans, and did it for one week. The vanilla flavor was much, much closer to what I was going for. I'm on the fence as to if I hit the exact mark, or if I want to add a little more.
With all that said, everyone basically drank up what I had left so I needed to brew up some more! It is the same recipe as before, didn't change anything. Brew day went pretty smooth, however I took my eyes of the boil kettle for a moment and got a boil over. Other than hurting my pride, and more clean-up, that was the only drama.
What I can update you all on is that I had a lot of transfers to do this weekend too. First off, I took my Oktoberfest out of the carboy, and moved it into a keg. I didn't carbonate it, but I needed to free up the carboy, and I'm simply lagering right now so the keg seemed a good solution. I gave it a quick taste and I think it has some great potential. However my SG reading was a little high, so it isn't as dry as what I was hoping for. I've also now had my Barleywine and Imp Stout on bourbon oak for a month now, so I transferred those to secondaries taking them off the oak. They will now just sit until Mid-Nov. They both tasted great, I am real happy with them. Lastly I transferred the Imp IPA to secondary. It is still bubbling! Tastes pretty good, but it will taste much better once I get the last round of hops on it.
Well that is everything from this week's brew session. Happy brewing!
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