Beer Updates: El Dorado Amber Ale, California Vanilla Porter, Gondwana IPA

Over the past two weeks, there has been some action on various batches. This is all summarized below.

El Dorado Amber Ale

• On April 7, one week after brewing, I transferred the El Dorado Amber Ale over to the secondary fermenter. Gravity at this point was 1.014, down from 1.053; this equals 6.5% abv and 72.6% apparent attenuation.
• I added 0.5 oz. of El Dorado hops pellets, aiming for two weeks of dry hopping prior to bottling

California Vanilla Porter

• After seven days of vanilla beans in the secondary fermenter, this beer was ready to bottle. I recently got a second-hand set of "PhilTap" minikegs (thanks, Dad!), and this was the first batch to get the PhilTap treatment, along with the Gondwana IPA.
• At bottling, gravity was 1.014, down from 1.064. This indicates 6.6% abv and 77.0% apparent attenuation.
• The kegs were each carbonated with 1.5 tbs of corn sugar. The remaining 1.9 gallons were carbonated with 1.65 oz. of corn sugar boiled in 0.5 cup of water (target carbonation=2.6 volumes).
• The total yield for this batch was: 2 5-L mini-kegs, 11 12-oz bottles, 3 22-oz. bottles, and 1 16-oz. grolsch bottle.

Gondwana IPA

• After 17 days of dry hopping with 2 oz. of Citra hops pellets, this beer was ready to package. As I was transferring it out, I was hit with a fantastic hops aroma - a fantastic bouquet of passionfruit with a little citrus. These also held up in the tasting.
• At bottling, gravity was 1.008, down from 1.047. This equals 5.1% abv, and an apparent attenuation of 82.3%.
• The kegs were carbonated with 1.5 tbs of corn sugar. The remaining 1.5 gallons was primed with 1.45 oz. of corn sugar boiled in 0.5 cup water.
• The total yield for this batch was 2 5-L mini-kegs, 8 12-oz bottles, 2 22-oz. bottles, and 1 16-oz. Grolsch bottle.
• After a week, I tapped one of the mini-kegs. The result is beautiful! The hops aroma is still fantastic, although the beer doesn't have a lot of body (not surprising given the high fermentability). Even so, the flavor is quite clean, which is nice after my early worries.

Gondwana IPA, first pour from the mini-keg