Cold Crashing

For my Citra Citrus Light IPA I wanted to present a naturally clear beer. I did not have any whirl flock tablets when I made it, no Irish moss, and I don't really want to mess with gelatin finings. What is a man to do? Cold Crash It.

This is actually pretty simple you just put your fermenter, secondary fermentor, keg, demijohn, conical, whatever and cool it to the mid 30's. The yeast get cold, they give up and go dormant. That's basically it, Then you bottle it. There should be enough dormant yeast to carbonate the beer once you bottle it.

In practice I've had trouble with this, I can't fit my fermentors into my food fridge. Never fear because you can keg a beer and counter pressure fill bottles. I always forget kegs are cold and hold beer. You can also secondary in a keg and just bottle normally although I imagine this it less than ideal given the ease of leaving the beer in a keg or counter pressure filling.

After 2 weeks in the refrigerator my beer is looking less hazy. I believe that more yeast and trub has settled because the flash penetrated further into the beer. It's darker at the top then the middle or the bottom. I'll be bottling this soon, and hoping for the best.

Lambic #3 Brewday

As mentioned in my previous post on Lambic Brewing I had a vial of yeast I needed to use.

This featured the same brew schedule as My Other Lambics with a few changed details

The recipe is the same with one deviation. I used Czech Saaz hops which had been warm and set aside for a few months. They smelled hoppy but not really hoppy, not like when they were fresh. This is different then the oven aged hops which had a slightly toasted dried scent. I forgot my large brew bags at my apartment so I was forced to go without.

(read more after the break.)

Hop Profile: Citra Hop

In an effort to put more things on my blog I am going to post profiles of hops that I think I have a good handle on. This won't be as frequent as some of my other posts, recipes, processes, and such. I plan to only post on a hop when I've used it a few times, made beers showcasing the flavor, and had commercial examples featuring it as a dominant/single hop.

Citra Hop:
Northern Brewer defines/describes it as, "A very new American hop with parentage from Hallertau Mittelfruh, East Kent Goldings, and others. High alpha and strong tropical fruit aromas and flavors (think mango, papaya, and pineapple)."

While drinking it (Citra Pale):
I would say that the smell is strong and dank. The fruity scent is undeniably sweet. It is rich like mangoes or papayas. It also carries a rich wetness scent (dank basement) to deepen the aroma.

Thoughts about use:
An incredibly smooth bitterness. The IBU number Beersmith calculates and the number I'd guess are very far apart. I trust the alpha acid measurements, but I think the bitterness is just so smooth that the apparent bitterness is lower.

Overall:
This is a hop I love to use. With so many hops boasting the desired 'citrus' flavor at this point I have to say Citra Hop is a man among boys in terms of intensity and flavor.

Process: Bottling

I keg and bottle. Bottles are 100% more convenient for moving around; kegs are more convenient for everything else. To Bottle beer you have to clean and sanitize every bottle, add sugar, and cap. A lot can go wrong with this whole thing however the same care that you put into brewing under sanitary conditions should help you to bottle this under sanitary conditions. The purpose of this post it to walk you through everything I do to bottle a 1 gallon batch of beer. Bottling five gallon batches differs in a few ways which I'll touch on but won't detail.

(read more after the break)