Bottling time!

A quick check of the Porter at the weekend showed that the gravity was down to 1.010! This is actually a little lower than I was expecting and I didn't want it to lose all its body from fermenting out too dry. There was still the occasional bubble going through the air-lock but I've decided to treat it as finished. 

It tastes lovely, really smooth with liquorice flavours and a dry roasty bitterness at the end but without being harsh or overpowering. I hope that's partly a result of my decision to steep the dark grains rather than mash them, there's certainly no burnt toast flavour and that's what I wanted to avoid. So far, so good!

I racked the beer off the yeast and trub, and into the pressure barrel I use for bottling (it has a tap, which makes things easier). The weather gods are smiling on my brewing this time and we've just hit a cold snap, with temperatures hovering between 1C and 3C. Just right for cold crashing the beer to drop out the yeast and proteins - or so I've read! 

So I've wrapped a plastic bag over the barrel tap and stuck it outside to chill. My aim in doing this is to improve clarity in the beer, but also drop out a bit more yeast to avoid bottle bombs. This WLP001 yeast really does seem to just keep going and going if you give the fermenter a shake every now and then. I think this is something I could've done on batch #1 to get a better attenuation - note for next time.