Happy Brew Day!

It's go time here at the brewery. We've had a coconut brown and an el dorado pale ale in the fermenters for 3 weeks, so it's time to do some kegging. The el dorado needs another day or two, but the coconut brown is as ready as it's going to get. Plus, we need a fermenter for the cream ale we're brewing today.

The coconut brown fermented in a traditional fermenter and thus lost some volume just due to the design of the vessel. So final kegging volume was probably around 4 gallons. It's got a beautiful color - dark brown like a Newcastle and clarity was probably the best we've produced so far. It'll chill in a keg for at least one week - maybe two - before being tapped. 

The cream ale brew session went well. Mash temp was great and sparge was like clockwork. About half way through the boil I realized we hadn't added any hops. Oops. Quickly threw in the 60 and 30 hop additions plus a little and hoped for the best. The 15 min addition went in as scheduled. Decided to add 5 min to the boil to make up for less hop time. Not sure if it was the extra 5 minutes or what, but the wort is darker than expected. It could still taste great...but it will be darker than normal for a cream ale. We'll know in a couple weeks! Fingers crossed.