The Apartment Homebrewer

The spring equinox has passed and spring has sprung (at least in central Texas)! The weather has been nice and frost isn’t likely, so I recently put out my spring-season balcony garden. Those who read the Session Oatmeal Stout post may have noticed transplanted bluebonnets and sunflower seedlings next to the beer. My garden is growing fast so long as I can keep those bloody aphids away!

At any rate, I have some interesting posts planned this week. As seen in the pictures above (and for those who follow me on Twitter @apthomebrewer), I recently racked the fermented wheat beer into the secondary with the passion fruit juice addition. About 12 hours after racking, secondary fermentation began, and luckily, without need for a blowoff tube. On a side note, I normally do not rack to the secondary. Nearly all my batches go straight into a keg or bottle after primary fermentation is complete. However, since I wanted to save the yeast for a future batch, I racked to the secondary so that no fruit solids made it into the washed yeast had I added the fruit straight to the primary. I’ll be updating the Passion Fruit Wheat Brew Day and Photo Gallery posts with the secondary details and pictures soon.

For those who are curious on what the future batch will be, I am planning to brew a single hop APA using only Falconer’s Flight hops. For those unfamilar with this hop, interestingly, Falconer’s Flight isn’t a single hop strain at all, but rather a proprietary hop blend by Hop Union. Via morebeer.com, Falconer’s Flight is a hop blend designed for APAs and IPAs to celebrate homebrewer Glen Falconer who passed in 2002. The Falconer’s Flight “hop” is exclusively blended with Northwest hops to create flavors and aromas in the citrus, floral, and tropical fruit spectrum. I am excited to try this hop blend out, especially in honor of Glen Falconer. Look for a brew day post soon. I’ll likely be brewing this one tomorrow!

Lastly, I had a few questions from my Twitter page on the topic of storing brewing equipment in a small apartment. Since 140 characters isn’t the best venue to describe apartment storage techniques, look for an Apartment Brewing Tech post in the coming weeks. Unfortunately, I’ll have to tidy my brewing storage first. Oh well, I’ll consider it part of my spring cleaning!

How was your week in brewing, and how do you store your brewing equipment, regardless of living situation? Leave those comments below, especially those storage techniques! As always, cheers and happy brewing!