Ben Reichelt’s Weblog

I brewed a Hop Head Double IPA from Midwest Supplies several months ago, right in the middle of winter. Because of the low temperature the beer takes a little longer to ferment in the winter, so this one took several weeks to finish. This beer was fun to brew because it was a dry hopped recipe. Dry hopping is when you put some hops in the beer while it’s in the primary fermenter. These hops are supposed to influence the smell of the beer more than the taste, so you should get a real pungent hop smell when it’s done.

I was disappointed with how it turned out from the hoppiness perspective. It wasn’t as hoppy as the Bell’s Hopslam that I had earlier this year, and that was what I was going for. It still tastes great and I’ll have no problem finishing the beer, with the help of friends of course.

Another reason I took awhile finishing the beer was that I was adding another keg to my kegerator setup in the basement, so now I’ve got two taps, the java stout and the double ipa are currently in there.

Unfortunately, I must have forgotten to write down any of my measurements for this beer, so I don’t have dates or readings for you on this one

Here are a couple photos of the keg setup in the basement, I don’t think I’ve ever posted pics:

This is a shot from inside the fridge. You can see the two kegs, the co2 tank and all the tubes coming from the kegs to the taps that are drilled into the door.

And here’s a shot of the door from the outside, showing the taps.

I want to get some cool tap handles at some point, but it’ll take some modifications to the fridge. If I made the existing handles any longer then whenever you opened the freezer on top you would knock the taps forward and spill beer. What I think I’m gonna do is  put a piece of metal to connect the fridge door with the freezer door, so that when you open either of them, they’ll both open up and no beer will be spilled. I also need to add the drip trays, I have them but I’ve just been too lazy to put them on. There’s a bucket to catch the drips right now that you can’t see in the photo.