Keep on Racking in the Free World

I decided to rack the Maibock into secondary fermentation today and store in the kegerator for lagering.  Some people have been asking what lagering is versus a lager beer.  A lager beer is a beer that is fermented with a lager yeast (bottom fermenting).  Lagering is a conditioning period where the beer is stored at cold temperatures (approximately 33 to 38 degrees) for an extended period of time (atleast a few weeks, but sometimes months).  Lagering helps round out a beer brewed with a lager strain and will help achieve that "smoothness" that is desirable in a lager beer.  Lagering also helps clarify beer as any particulate matter tends to settle to the bottom during lagering.

As pictured above, I took a gravity (a measure of the density of the liquid) reading before racking into secondary and noted it to be about 1.022 brix (a scale for measuring gravity).  Hopefully when done this brew will have a final gravity around 1.015 coming down from a starting gravity of 1.066.  Beers with higher final gravities will have a more noticeable sweetness relative to those with lower final gravities, due to the existence of unfermented or residual sugars.  In my opinion, a good maibock should have a noticeable sweetness.

I was messing around with my new ipod nano, which now takes video (in case you've been living in a cave and didn't hear), and I took a quick video of the inside of the HolzBrew kegerator:



Surprisingly the video quality wasn't too bad for being on an mp3 player.

I hear that Northern Virginia is getting 22 ouncers of Troegs Nugget Nectar in this week, as well as, Bells Hopslam. Now that's a great week for beer. I've put an order in for a sixtel of Nugget Nectar, hopefully it all fits in the kegerator.

Keep it racking,

HolzBrew