You know, I'd be much better at taking photos if I ever remembered to take photos, which is rarely. Like this for example. Had many opportunities to take better photos of the racking process. When do I remember? When it's in the fricken fridge. Oh well.

So I racked* my Alt Bier (yes it's called Alt-ercation Amber) over to the secondary fermentation vessel; a 6 gallon better bottle. True, I'd be better to be in a 5 gallon (less room for air and therefore oxidation), but you work with what you've got. The gravity remained at 1.013, so the primary phase of activity is complete, now it's time to lager this for at least 2 weeks to drop a lot of the yeast out of suspension and let some of the flavors mature

* racking means you moved the liquid from one place to another. You don't actually want to pour it back and forth because this will introduce more oxygen to the beer which causes off flavors due to oxidation. So you actually take some tubing and what they call a "racking cane" (looks like a small plastic cane) and transfer the liquid that way, slowly and smoothly.

Of course the fridge is up at like 65°F right now, but I guess that's what you get when to introduce 5 gallons of a 72°F liquid to 8 cubic feet of 40°F air. Luckily there's nothing in there that is temperature sensitive. But this thing is gonna cycle all night long.

Tomorrow I'll be heading off to the brew supply store again and picking up a few more things so I can brew my IPA, Crisis and Hoppertunity.