Tasting the BVIP

This is certainly quite a different tasting beer. I think right now the bourbon could have been mixed in a little better with the beer. During kegging, my guess is there is more bourbon in the bottom of the keg, so it is dominating the flavor. But, my wife likes it, so that must count for something.
The helles is going right along, it was down to about 1.012 after a week. I'm going to check it again this weekend. One other thing I learned was that the FWH is a flavor addition, not a bitterness addition. Oh well, we'll see how it comes out.

Helles Style Lager

I brewed 11 gallons of Helles lager today, similar to the brew we did at Valley Farms over the Christmas holiday. The recipe was pretty simple:
12 lbs Weyermans Pilsner
5 lbs Weyermans Munich
1 lb Carahelle
1 oz Perle (9.4% AA) First Wort Hopping
1 oz Liberty (4.0% AA) @ 10 minutes
4 packs Safale S-23 pitched at 50 degrees
Target og was 1.049 for 11 gallons, which I hit right on with about 11.5 gallons into the fermenter. The one new thing I tried was the FWH, which is putting hops in the kettle prior to running anything out of the mash tun. It is supposed to result in a "smoother" bitterness. We'll see how it comes out in a month or 2. Cheers!

BVIP

I kegged the Bourbon Vanilla Imperial Porter the other night. It certainly is different than anything I've done before. I ended up leaving the vanilla in for about 16 days, which is a little bit over what the recommended time is. But, it is good and there is a lot of flavor.
I noticed that my refractometer was out of calibration, so the og was really about 1.078, and the fg was 1.021. So, for just the beer, it is 7.4% abv, and add in 375 mL of bourbon, and it is close to 8%. Yummy.