03 May 2005

First Dry Hop

After doing some reading I learned that Irish moss won't work after the boil. I swear I read it somewhere to add it during secondary fermentation, but I couldn't find the reference again. There are other clarifyers I could use, but I don't have any now.

Anyway, on Sunday, after Key-Z, the big M and I drove home from the rose garden, I dry-hopped my beer with 1 1/2 oz or so of saaz hop pellets. The result was pretty cool; I have a hazy wheatish colored beer with an inch of pure green floating on top. Now how I'm going to get my siphon around all that floating debris I don't know. I was scared to bag it because the cheese cloth wouldn't be sanitized. My readings, however, say not to worry so much because the alcohol now present will actually stop a lot of bad bacteria from forming.