My brew buddy and I bottled my Red's Rye "clone" tonight after it sat in primary for roughly 3 1/2 weeks, getting a dry hop of 2oz Amarillo for 6 days. We filled 39x 12oz bottles, 4x 22oz bombers, and had a partial fill, which we drank
And it was delicious. It had a very nice citrus / floral hop aroma and flavor, with a smooth bitterness that didn't linger. It might be a touch on the sweet side, but I'll know for sure once it's all conditioned and whatnot and I taste the finished product. Far and away the best of my batches yet. I think I'm an official convert to the keep-it-in-primary camp - the yeasties seem to have cleaned up whatever off-flavors may have been produced by the early hot fermentation temps.
My only concern at this point is that my buddy, though his intentions are good, is a rather impatient fellow and has a tendency to act without too much forethought, and he wasn't exactly terribly concerned with my insistence upon sanitation. I decided to use a muslin bag as a filter while racking from the carboy to the bottling bucket to hopefully catch any bigger hop particles, but forgot to put it on the end of the siphon hose before starting the transfer (there was probably a good two gallons of beer in the bottling bucket at this point.) He grabbed the bag out of the sanitizer and went for the hose, so I advised him to either pinch the hose to stop the siphon first or at least make sure he was careful not to let the beer splash too much (I was holding the racking cane steady, or else I would have done it myself
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So, instead of pulling the hose out of the beer, he just stuck his fingers into the beer and started rummaging around to put the muslin bag on the end of the hose. I was sort of in shock and so I didn't say anything quick enough to stop him ha, but I'm hoping the fact that he dunked his hands into the sanitizer first will have helped prevent some possible contamination.
Other than that it went pretty well, and I've got 2 cases of happy beer conditioning away in the closet. Tasting and final thoughts to hopefully come early next week!