Idlewild Creek Bottled

By scot in Home Brewing on Sunday, March 14th, 2010

Idlewild creek home brew with one gallon with vanilla bean, another gallon with oak burboun chips, and the rest all natural.

The Robust Porter, Idlewild Creek, that I brewed on February 20th, is now in the bottle after a few hours of work this morning. The beer was in primary for two weeks as I wanted to harvest the yeast to brew this again soon. Idlewild Creek then sat in the secondary for a week, mainly for the two specials to age.

The two specials are one gallon with vanilla bean (about a quarter of a bean) and another gallon with oak and bourbon. Based on the aroma and flavor, I would add more vanilla bean to the one gallon carboy in the future and/or let it age more than a week.

The oak, bourbon batch was pretty close to what I wanted. The oak wasn’t over powering but I did add an extra ounce of Makers to the bottling bucket to up the ante on bourbon. I had soaked about .2 ounces of oak chips in two ounces of bourbon for a week before the original racking to the one gallon carboy.

The last three gallons, which was straight forward, had a really nice roast flavor and, even flat, was damn tasty. I am looking forward to trying all three of these beers in the next three to four weeks. free run 6 v2 femmes My basement is about 56 degrees this time of year and bottling conditioning seems to be a little slower.

By the time it is ready, I should be close to bottling Double Bogey, a Russian Imperial Stout that was brewed last Saturday. Also, a two weeks from today, I should be back to brewing an IPA and, my wife likes the wheat beer I brewed and is half done with that already. Maybe it is time for ten gallon batches. 😀

The only thing I can say about home brewing: if you get the itch, it will keep scratching. Enjoy!