Sunday, March 25, 2012

KG30 (Honey Wheatwine) update

A couple of weeks ago, I racked my honey wheatwine to secondary. Since I am brewing it for my cousin's thirtieth birthday, I've decided to call the wheat wine KG30, a mix of her initials and her birthday. During transfer I took a gravity reading, and it was only a couple of points short of hitting my FG, so I was pretty happy, especially since I was a few points under gravity on brew day.
Speaking of which, the reason I was below my estimated SG was because I didn't boil off enough volume, so I actually ended up with too much wort when I was in primary. Because of this, I had about a half gallon of beer leftover from transfer, so I racked it into a sanitized 2 liter bottle and put my Carbonator Cap on it with plans to force-carb it and taste it... instead I ended up putting it in the freezer, with the hops of concentrating the alcohol and adding it back to the beer to make up for the low starting gravity.
After racking the beer to secondary I then added 1.5 pounds of mesquite honey I'd bought from Trader Joe's. The airlock started bubbling within a few hours, and didn't quiet down until Friday. Saturday morning, I added a jar of American oak cubes (medium plus toast) that I had soaked in Tequila for two weeks. I'll let it age in the better bottle until June or July, at which time I'll bottle it all up.
Some pictures from the transfer day:
The leftovers, with the carbonator cap on it. They're incredibly useful.
1.021 before adding honey. 7% right now, it will probably end up around 9%.
Candlelight taste-test: It's already quite good. Oak and honey should make it even tastier.

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