Brewed my first high gravity beer back in August, a partial-mash Russian Imperial Stout, so that it will be ready by Christmas time. That style is big and bold, and good for winter drinking. It will be about 10% abv. I brewed a 3 gallon batch that was left in primary fermentation for a month. I used the yeast cake from a previous amber ale to ferment the beer, since high gravity beer needs lots of yeast to be able to ferment, as yeast can struggle with such a sugar-rich wort.
I then racked it into a smaller 3 gallon carboy for secondary fermentation. It was in secondary for 2 months, and bottled in the middle of November. I added some additional yeast when bottling, in case the original yeast was too tired to keep going to carbonate the bottles. Hopefully it's carbonated and ready to go in a month.
The hop harvest of the Cascade and Nugget hops turned out decent for the 1st year, which isn't supposed to be real great.
You can see the lupulin powder inside the hop cones, which is what gives off the hop aroma and oils that flavor and acts as a preservative in beer.
I had enough hops to use as the flavor/aroma addition in a batch. So I decided to brew a Black IPA, which is basically a hoppy Indian Pale Ale, but has a little dark malt, so the beer ends up black. But it doesn't have the strong roasted coffee and chocolate flavors that porters and stouts have.
I also dry hopped the beer with the homegrown hops, as the hops were ready for harvest in two batches. Hop cones are ready to pick when they are crunchy and papery feeling. Dry hopping refers to adding the hops directly into the secondary fermentation carboy, which adds a huge hop aroma to the beer.
I have been feeding my spent grains to the chickens, which they seem to love.
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