Fermenting/Dry Hop : Fat Rabbit IPA

The Fat Rabbit IPA sat in the No-Chill Cube on the 25g of mixed Challenger/Redsell's Eastwell Goldings hops for 2 days until a got the fermentation fridge sorted out ready for this brew to ferment with Safale S04. I dry pitched the yeast right on top of the sweet wort. Really should have made a starter or something as after I pitched the yeast, I noticed it was nearly a year after it's use by date. Got away with it though as it started fermenting by the next morning.

I set the fridge to 22'C as the Temperature Range for this yeast is  15-24'C. This was left to ferment undisturbed for 7 days before I checked the gravity, it dropped down to 1020 SG from 1058 SG. So Happy days.

Sample tasted very good, and it's a great colour at the moment. A pale gold.

Due to the fact that this beer is using home grown Hops and I have plenty to spare I am having my first go at Dry Hopping a beer.

I spent a day in town trying to hunt down a nylon or muslin bag to use to dry hop this brew in the Primary fermentor (I don't have a second 25litre bucket) ended up finding one of these.

So in went a Jack Daniels glass and I StarSan'ed the bag and glass, added a massive load of Hops (50g) and dropped it into the fermenting bucket in the fridge. Dropped the temperature in the fridge to 20'C and the bag and Hops will now stay there for a few days to extract the aromas.

I expect I'll be bottling this by the end of the month and hopefully it will turn out a good brew, as I'm hoping this will be the basic recipe for my House IPA