Nitrogenated Paulaner

This sunday, my new Paulaner clone came out of secondary. Since both my CO2 and Nitrogen taps are empty right now, I decided to put the Paulaner on the Nitrogen rig and see what it turns into. Since Hefeweizen is traditionally one of the least carbonated beers, i thought it might be a good fit.

Several hours of chilling and bleeding later, i pulled two pints of this brew for testing. It was strange to see a light colored beer like that with a Guiness style head. And it didn't taste bad. It didn't taste better either tho and since Nitrogen is more expensive, i decided to bleed the tank and carbonate it instead. Good thing Nitrogen is not easily water soluble, so carbonating it should return it to its normal state. I'll find out tonight.

In other beer news, I started an American Pale ale last week when the Paulaner went to secondary. Yesterday it went to secondary. Not gonna experiment with Nitrogen on this one, so i'll actually have two carbonated kegs on tap starting next week. As I went to secondary, I decided to dry-hop for the first time. The recipe had called for 1oz. of Cascade. I dug through my box of left over hops and didn't find any spare Cascade, so after enjoying the scent of the various Hops, i decided on a leftover ounce of Centennial instead of the Cascade. We'll see how it goes when i keg it next weekend.

Also picked up another airlock and rubber stopper. We got a gallon bottle of Burgundy a while back to make Sangria. The bottle was shaped like a small carboy and I decided to repurpose it for yeast starters. Been saving a bit of the wort of each brew in the vial that its yeast came in, letting it ferment and build up more yeast. Next brew I have planned is a Guiness and i don't have a yeast for that, but after that I'll use one of those leftovers to culture a nice yeast starter, see how that goes. Once i start buying DME and syrup in bulk my primary expense is yeast, so keeping my own cultures would be useful.