L has a new favorite beer! The Imperial IPA kit from Wilmington Homebrew with high gravity and hop modifications is DELICIOUS! It is extremely hoppy and very well balanced. We ended up bottling about half of it because we didn't think we would be able to drink 5 gallon in three-ish weeks because it was going to be so hoppy. I'm pretty sure L is very disappointed that we didn't keg more. It was gone in about a week.
This was our first significant bottling experience. I can definitely understand why a lot of people brew one batch and quit. The bottling process, between cleaning, sanitizing, filling, capping, cleaning again, labeling, and aging, is a bit ridiculous. Definitely not something we want to do on the regular. One thing we learned is that you CAN NOT reuse Stella Artois bottles! It will break your capper!
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| Cleaning the bottles - if you're lucky, the labels come off here too. |
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| Filling bottles. |
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| Capping bottles, not a fun task for a 6'4" dude with back problems. |
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| Opps. Stella bottles don't work. |
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| Lots of Imperial IPA! |
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| Our awesome logo I designed on the labels L designed. |
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| "Dude, this is awesome!" |
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| It is quite pretty. |
We took it IPA over to L's parents house for a taste test along side Harpoon IPA and Sweetwater IPA. The Harpoon really wasn't very hoppy at all and tasted more like a regular American Pale. It was my favorite. The Sweetwater was just really, really hoppy, but didn't have enough of a malty flavor to balance it out. L like ours the best as it was both hoppy and balanced.
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