Cherry Brevity

On Saturday evening I brewed up Brevity Wit again; this time, however, I plan on racking it onto cherries in the secondary. I've got the cherries all ready, though I still haven't decided quite how much to use. I have a little more than two pounds; not sure if I'll use all of 'em.

The Recipe:

4 lb 2-row pale malt
4 lb wheat malt
1 lb flaked wheat

5 AAU (28g @ 5% AA) East Kent Goldings @ 60 min

1 oz ground coriander @ 2 min
Zest from 2 oranges (16g) @ 2 min

Rack onto cherries in secondary.

Wyeast 3944 - Belgian Witbier

Mashed at 152° for an hour using just shy of 12 quarts of water. Batch-sparged (needed 2 batches since I can't quite heat enough water to do it all in one batch after the mash) using 170°-190° water.

O.G.: 1.048
Est. IBU: 16.8

I used the newly rebuilt 10-gallon mash tun and it worked like a champ. I'm glad to finally have that thing all sorted out. I rocked 80% efficiency this time, and I'm pretty happy with that. Pitched the yeast in the mid-to-high 60s. When I checked the temperature 24 hours after pitching (a pretty good kräusen was going), it was at 68°, so it's keeping a pretty good temperature.

Pretty much everything went uneventfully, though I got distracted and didn't aerate the wort quite as much as I normally do. The result of this appears to be a less vigorous fermentation; I should also mention, however, that even three or so hours after smacking, my Wyeast Activator packet was not anywhere near fully bloated. So, I might have had not-perfectly-viable yeast. I guess I'll just have to see how it turns out; it's fermenting now, so I don't think the effects will be too bad.

I also racked Nugget into the secondary on Saturday and introduced the dry hops. I think I'll leave them in there for a week and then keg. SG read 1.008 at racking, which makes it 5.8% ABV -- a pretty sweet spot for IPAs. It is just about as bitter as you can imagine.