Catching up...

So I haven't blogged too much lately. I'm still recovering from Novemberfest so I haven't brewed recently, and having headed up to Michigan for Thanksgiving (where I had the opportunity to visit Short's Brewing) I've been slacking off. Well, today I finally took care of some long-overdue housekeeping. I kegged the 6.5-gallon carboy of Scottish ale, taking a final gravity reading of 1019. It's nice; you can definitely taste the result of boiling down the first gallon (in fact, you can almost notice to TOO much; it comes dangerously close to having that melanoidin malt taste that I find overbearing). I'm looking forward to trying it once cooled and carbonated. The Scottish is residing in the Syzlak keg.

I also took a gravity reading on our gluten-free Saison, which is at 1014. However, I'm not sure I'm confident in that reading. Oddly enough (and everything's odd when you're brewing gluten-free) most of the hop trub has floated to the surface, so the sample I drew was full of hop bits and floaties. I'm not sure if that would actually cause the gravity reading to be low (if anything, I would think it would raise it), but I tasted it and it seemed sweeter than 1014. It was quite hoppy (as one would expect with hop bits floating around) and had a nice peppery note to it, so I'm looking forward to the final results.

One last note... This Saturday I'll be checking out the Drinking & Writing Brewery's 12 Steps of Christmas over at Hopleaf (I blogged about it earlier today over at the HOPS! blog). If you're not doing anything, I highly recommend you check it out too.