Brew #3: Initial Tasting
I haven’t really had a chance to have a decent tasting session of the latest brew yet. I tapped off a pint last weekend and was mildly impressed.
The beer is a lot darker than I imagined but with minimal head (must be due to the lesser amount of Young’s body brew i added at kegging time). Taste is good with decent, but not overpowering bitterness.
However, the beer suffers in a similar way to my previous batches in that it doesn’t have a good “beery” mouthfeel. It feels kind of watery. I’m not sure what the problem/solution is here…
Will post more when I’ve drunk more 
Brew #3: Kegged
I noticed that fermentor/airlock activity had stopped completely a couple of days ago. Finally got round to kegging the brew last night. I couldn’t be bothered bottling any so it’s all been put in the Hambleton Bard Beer Sphere.
After the usual round of cleaning/sterilizing everything in sight I began. I put 2oz of Malto Dextrin in 1 pint of boiled water to dissolve. Then removed the lid from the fermentor and set the siphon up. The rubber seal on the Beer Sphere Lid was liberally coated with vaseline and put to one side.
Next, the Malto Dextrin/H2O solution was poured into the beer sphere, after checking that the tap/float system was secure and ready to go. Started the siphon with the fermentor on the kitchen table and the Beer Sphere on the floor. Note: make sure not to splash the beer as splashing adds oxygen which causes beer to go off. Run the stream of beer down the side of the barrel, this makes the process eerily silent!
Once all of the beer has been transferred the Beer sphere lid was screwed on tight… Job done! Should be good for a taste in 2 weeks.
