First Snow

Today was racked the first snow to secondary. Since we had a little more than 5 gallons we put about 0.75 gallons into a jug and will add a Light French Oak wood spiral to the jub about 14 days prior to bottling. Last year's Oaked First Snow was a little too "intense oak flavor" for some, so we'll tone it down a bit this year and try to find a happy medium. The beer finished at 1022 (down from 1090) for 9% alcohol. Less than last year's 10.1%, but still respectable. For whatever reason, this year most of our repeat brews have been about 1-2% less alcohol than the previous years. Hopefully it is just a fluke in the 2 beers it has happened (Snow and BW) and we'll get back to normal next month when we brew the Imperial Stout.

We've also drank all but 2 of the First Snow's from last year. With rain in the forcast next week we are planning on finishing those as we have to say goodbye to Elky and pack him away until next winter.

Tomorrow is our Double Pale Ale with Falconer's Flight, followed the next weekend by our Belgian Pale Ale. Two weeks after that will likely be our last beer brewed in Colorado. With plans to move around the first or second week of June, we want to make sure everything is bottled before then. We might try to squeeze something of lower gravity in, but I doubt it.

Everything else is sitting nicely in the garage. We plan on bottling the Barleywine on Sunday, and hopefully this year we'll wax dip soon after that. We have 3 empty kegs waiting to be filled and hopefully by the 2nd week in April, they'll all be filled with the Steam Beer, Schwarz, and Brown Ale.