Into the bottles.

I bottled two batches this weekend - a pilsner and a runt of a rye ale.  The pils checks in at a little less than 6.5% abv, while the rye ale barely tips the scales at 4.25% abv.  Both of them should be good drinkers in a couple of weeks, albeit with completely different personalities.

The rye is the little beer that could, while the pilsner is the classic German stoic.  For the pils I did a double decoction, hit all my mash temps and the whole thing was more or less Bavarian engineering at its finest.

The rye on the other hand was almost a total disaster.  I mashed with 12 pounds of grain, including two pounds of rye, and was looking for an original gravity in the 1.062 range.  The malt came to me very poorly crushed, however, so my brewhouse efficiency was terrible - I'm talking like 50-something percent.  I guess it was partially my fault for not checking the crush before starting the mash.  Lesson learned.

Anyway, the actual gravity going into the fermenter was around 1.040, so I was kinda pissed off at the thing - I had wasted a ton of fresh, whole hop flowers and a whole brewing night for this little wimp of a beer.  I didn't even bother to rack it out of the primary, and I didn't dry hop it like I had planned, either.

Much to my surprise, when I went to bottle it - it's got some good character.  Really nice hop flavor and aroma with enough malt background to give it a little bit of balance.  It should be a great session beer.

It may be a lightweight, but I'm not mad at it anymore.