Today is a brew “maintenance” day. It is these days during homebrewing that make you wish you could speed up time just a bit to get to the final product. Patience, patience, patience.
I added the first batch of hops for dry hopping the Lt. Topper, the first beer in my CLONE WARS series. It is a Heady Topper clone. I will let this first dry hopping of just short of 4 ounces of hops sit for a few days before I transfer it to the secondary and add even more hops. This beer smells wonderful. I have a few cans of Heady Topper off to the side to be able to do a comparison.
Today is also the first of two coconut toasting days. Today I am toasting 14 ounces of coconut to go into RISing Mounds, a chocolate coconut Russian Imperial stout. I will also make a new addition of some more Royal Dutch Chocolate and some Mayan cacao powder. This will all be at the bottom of the 6 gallon glass carboy when I rack it over shortly. I may have to sample a little wort during the transfer for both gravity sake, and taste. Oh yeah, and I will also add two vanilla beans soaking in bourbon….a little extra tastiness!