MERRY CHRISTMAS!
Santa was very generous this year...but I did ask for a new quarterback and that unfortunately was NOT under the tree...
Maybe next year =)
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Howdy Kids,
I'm here to report that we are officially 4 cases of beer richer!
2 of the oatmeal stout and 2 of the VGS (see previous posts to see what that means). We are going to use some of this beer as holiday gifts, so maybe you, YES YOU could be one of the lucky few to get to drink some of this liquid deliciousness very soon. But looking at the blog stats (big shout out to our readers in Russia), you probably won't be.
Anyway, assuming its tasty...we won't know for a few weeks. Right now its in the bottles getting happy =)
Anyway, here's what we did:
Best Christmas Tree Ever! (All the bottles, freshly sanitized and ready to go)
First, we retake the specific gravity of the beer. Comparing the specific gravity before and after the initial fermentation phase lets us know how much alcohol by volume our beer will have (after some crazy math calculations).
Look at all that stuff on the side of the bucket. It looks like crap, but it's the residue from the malt and hops that wasn't strained out after the boil.
To bottle, we need to get the young beer out from the fermentation bucket and into a special bottling bucket (aka a bucket with a spout on the bottom of it).
We took the beer from the bucket and slowly filled each bottle one by one. Yours truly took care of putting all the caps on.
Ta da! Here's the finished product!
Full trunk!
MERRY CHRISTMAS TO US!
Commence gift giving (aka testing our beer on our unsuspecting Guinea pig friends). Reviews and reflections to come.
Next up on the hit list, a Winter Ginger Snap Ale.
I'm here to report that we are officially 4 cases of beer richer!
2 of the oatmeal stout and 2 of the VGS (see previous posts to see what that means). We are going to use some of this beer as holiday gifts, so maybe you, YES YOU could be one of the lucky few to get to drink some of this liquid deliciousness very soon. But looking at the blog stats (big shout out to our readers in Russia), you probably won't be.
Anyway, assuming its tasty...we won't know for a few weeks. Right now its in the bottles getting happy =)
Anyway, here's what we did:
Best Christmas Tree Ever! (All the bottles, freshly sanitized and ready to go)
First, we retake the specific gravity of the beer. Comparing the specific gravity before and after the initial fermentation phase lets us know how much alcohol by volume our beer will have (after some crazy math calculations).
Look at all that stuff on the side of the bucket. It looks like crap, but it's the residue from the malt and hops that wasn't strained out after the boil.
To bottle, we need to get the young beer out from the fermentation bucket and into a special bottling bucket (aka a bucket with a spout on the bottom of it).
 |
| Happiness
Moving the beer
|
Then, once the bottling bucket is ready to go, we have to make sure the rest of our supplies are sanitary.
The bottle caps sitting in the iodaphor. Rule of thumb: SANITIZE EVERYTHING. IF IT'S IN THE ROOM, SANITIZE IT. We took it the extra mile, however, and (accidentally) sanitized a random stranger, and he would not stop screaming...
 |
| The spout here is for sanitizing and rinsing out the bottles |
Getting ready for bottling....
We took the beer from the bucket and slowly filled each bottle one by one. Yours truly took care of putting all the caps on.
Ta da! Here's the finished product!
Full trunk!
MERRY CHRISTMAS TO US!
Commence gift giving (aka testing our beer on our unsuspecting Guinea pig friends). Reviews and reflections to come.
Next up on the hit list, a Winter Ginger Snap Ale.
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