Leon: brewed

A few things happened today at the ol' brewery...

• Added 5 vials of Wyeast 1056 to the frozen yeast bank
• Dry hopped and racked the 2nd batch of Stonington Pale Ale to secondary. This pale ale smells fantastic already...I can't wait to see what additional layer of hoppiness the dry hopping will impart on the beer. And 1056 is a terrible flocculator. I really wish I could cold crash this beer. I'll hit it with gelatin at the end of the dry hopping to give it some chance at clarity.
• Brewed up a big DIPA (who's moniker is also Leon). We didn't have the Simcoe, so replaced those additions with more Centennial. No worries, as there's always a next time, and it'll be interesting to see about changing this one element to the DIPA in a future batch of Leon. Jason and I intend this beer to play back up role to the late fall/early winter encore of what will surely be a stellar showing for Leon (the beer's namesake):

I also had to take the good with the bad, as my prized 50L Pyrex reactor cum fermentor shattered in to many life threatening shards of glass. Thankfully, its loss was the worst of it, as I only suffered a small cut on my left hand and many gallons of sanitizer (not beer) dumped on to the kitchen floor. Enormous jugular hungry shards of non-safety glass lay before me in a soapy mess that made Jason ask nervously 'are you alright, buddy?'

It will be replaced with plastic, and my chances of *dying* on a brewday will be greatly diminished.

Anyhow, here are some pictures from today that show the magic of whirlfloc on enhancing cold break formation.

Oh! and I racked the oh-so-black 2009 RIS to secondary, and grabbed a quick taste of the hydrometer sample, and though still very young, the taste revealed a very clean fermentation and some underlying dark fruitiness from underneath the big roast flavor. I was able to wipe my brow with the back of my freshly lacerated hand, as the sorachi ace that was used in part to bitter the beer didn't impart any lemon flavor or aromas that I feared, likely thanks to the extended 90min boil. There's enough headspace to add the planned medium toast american oak, I consider oak to be an addition to my RIS' that I doubt I could do without at this point.