I spent much of the earlier part of the day delabeling and cleaning some empty bottles prior to Charles's arrival. Some things I learned - some labels are MUCH easier to remove than others. I soak the bottles in warm water to loosen up the labels, and it seems that some beers use some sort of at least semi-water soluble glue, so the labels peel right off, and the remaining glue comes off with just a bit of scrubbing. Others, not so much (note to self, don't bother with Sapporo bottles again). Anyway, I peeled and cleaned 49 12oz bottles and one 22oz bottle for the evening. I figured that should be enough, as 5 gallon recipes usually net 48 12oz bottles.
The gear was cleaned up just as Charles got there, and I was otherwise ready to roll. Last thing needed was to get the priming sugar ready in some boiling water. I was itching to use brown sugar to spruce this thing up a bit, but again, I wanted to play by the books for this one. So we used the priming sugar that it came with. With his suggestion and my own learning experience, for simplifying the siphoning process (from the carboy into the bottling bucket) I pulled the carboy out of the cabinet and very carefully (in order to avoid sloshing and thus stirring up the settled sediment) placed it on the table. We put the bottling bucket on the floor beneath it so that gravity could assist the siphon. We poured the cooled priming sugar solution into the bottom of the bucket and got the siphon going. Thanks to gravity, this siphoning process went MUCH quicker.
However, there was an oops. I guess it was inevitable.
When we started moving the beer over into the bottling bucket (on top of the priming sugar solution), we realized a little too late that we left the spigot opened... and about maybe 8 oz. poured out onto the floor... I think there was a fair amount of priming sugar in there too... We didn't add any more, and hopefully that won't end up being TOO big of a problem.
But, past that hiccup, we got it all into the bucket, which we then moved up to the counter. Charles attached the hose and bottling wand (or whatever it's called) hooked up, and we started bottling.
This was an interesting process... the wand thing is a pretty simple but smart tool. There's a little trigger stopper on the bottom so that when you push it into the bottom of a bottle, it opens and fills the bottle. When it gets to the top of the bottle, when you pull it up and out to stop it, the wand itself displaces just the right amount of liquid so that there's the right amount of airspace at the top of the bottle (for the carbonation process). Very cool. Charles did a couple and I capped them, and then we switched off and I filled the majority of the bottles while he capped. It would have taken FOREVER to do so alone; we both agreed that in the future, on either of our bottling days, we are having the other over to help with the process.
All told, we wound up with 47 12oz bottles and 1 22oz bottle, all filled and capped.
There was enough left in the bucket/one half filled bottle for the both of us to taste a little. Charles hit the nail on the head by noting that it tasted a bit like Newcastle Brown... I think that's what I'll end up with.
BUT: it wasn't skunked or ruined. Hooray! Beer.
Three weeks in the bottle for conditioning and carbonation, and we're a go! I'll be cracking one open to test this coming weekend, I'll come back to add a note then. I'll do a quick review of Charles's beers then too, I think. Enough for now.
Cheers!
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