Infuse Your Illusion

We've turned a corner, referring now to early 90's albums instead of movies. I suppose it was inevitable. Before proceeding on to discuss matters actually pertaining to beer, it's worth mentioning the particular significance of the song 'November Rain,' from Guns N' Roses' album Use Your Illusion I, to our formative years. To this day, we remember this song not for its impressive guitar solos or rain-soaked video imagery, but for the sense of dread it evoked at Junior High School dances. When those first few piano notes sounded, joined quickly thereafter by stirring strings, you knew you had to find someone good to dance with. Because if you didn't, you'd be stuck with whoever else you could find (or often worse, whoever could find you) for the next nine minutes.

Nine minutes can be a really long time, I assure you, but are nothing compared to the time required for beer to go from grain to glass. It had been two weeks since we brewed our Magnitude IPA, and it was time to transfer it into a secondary container (glass carboy) for final conditioning. To enhance its citrus aroma, we planned on dry-hopping with four ounces of Cascade. We figured that we could effectively infuse the 'good stuff' from the hops (alpha acids) if we first added the hop pellets to the carboy before transferring the beer from the primary fermenter. (This might not have been completely necessary, as the hops and beer will have a while to co-mingle, but it seemed like a good idea.) The end result was a swirling green mass atop a brown sea of IPA-in-training.

Sooo... all that green stuff will settle out in 10 days, right?

A preliminary tasting prior to transfer revealed Magnitude's potential. Bitter for sure, but not enough to completely overpower the malty sweetness. We tried a couple of specialty malts in this beer - Victory and Munich (both in relatively small proportions) - and so are very interested to see how they're manifested in the finished product. We should be good to keg in about 10 days, which can't come quickly enough... much like the end of 'November Rain' when shared with an unsavoury dance partner.