Pale Ale continued

So I kegged / bottled my pale ale last week. As I hinted I had some special post fermenation plans for this beer and boy howdy I implemented those plans. For starters I decided to split the batch into 5 separate containters. One was my new keg into which 3 gallons of the beer went. The other four were 2liter plastic containers. I decided to force carbonate the keg to make sure it was ready for this coming weekend, therefore I made sure to only use 2oz of priming suger for the 2 gallons going into the 2liter bottles.

My tests - I decided to try two very different styles for my pale ale. An IPA (or at least close to it) and a Chilli Beer.

IPA - I haven't done my research so I don't know if this would qualify as an IPA, but it tastes similar to one. I decided to dry hop my pale ale. This means I added hops to the secondary fermentation, i.e. the keg. I took 0.67 oz of willamete pelleted hops, put them in a tea ball and dropped it in. The tea ball was probably unnecessary, but I didn't want an undissolve chunk of pellet to clog my draw tube. So far tastes good. Definitely has a noticible, but not overpowering hop flavor.


Chilli Beer - My goal was to create something that resembles Devil's Spit - Hoppy and Spicy. I decided to add peppers. Since I had 4 different vessles, I decided to try 4 different kinds of peppers - jalepeno, fresno and serrano and smoked serrano. I washed and boiled each pepper for 30 seconds. The smoked serranos i did on the grill with some mesquite chips, which mainly ended up burning most of the peppers. I salvaged as many as I could and that is why I did 4 different kinds of peppers. As for the number of peppers to add to each 2liter, I totally had to guess. I decided to do 1 pepper per 12 oz beer. Since the jalepeno's were so big I only did 1/2. The bottles were bloated one day later, so hopefully that means I didn't screw up. Hopefully they'll be ready to go this weekend.