Bottled, last night, 29th May. usual two hours or so. followed a piece of advice i'd noticed on the Bodensatz site, whereby once the bottles were filled, i just placed the lids on them on the bench, and then continued filling the rest of the bottles. at the end, once all were filled, then i got to work with the capper. the reason being, the active live beer is producing CO2 and allowing it to sit for a period of time before sealing allows the CO2 to displace some of the air in the space at the top of the bottle. doubt there'll be much difference, but it actually made the bottling process smoother, in that i was focussed on sanitising, rinsing, sugaring, filling about 8 to 10 bottles at a time, and not having the capping process in the middle. perhaps a thing to do in future will be to move the barrel a few hours before bottling, up onto the bench and that way save all that wandering back and forth. will update this post later with numbers of bottles... lots more stubbies than i'd estimated.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Lachouffe pt 2
went to bottle last night, but timed the (seemingly very slow) bubbles, and they were still coming in at less than a minute between each, so. i guess i'll be bottling it all up tonight. sorted out the bottles, 8 x 750ml, roughly 7 or 8 x 330ml and the rest 500ml...
the similarities between the Maudite and Lachouffe are not lost on me... it will be interesting to see how the notes of the bitter vs the pilsner, plus the two different yeasts, behave.
the Maudite is drinking quite nicely now.
the Dunkel seems to have a similar issue to the original Bock, that being it is over carbonated, and champagnes upon opening. you have to be very quick to tilt the bottle to minimise yeast disruption. not a huge issue it being a wheat beer, but still preferable to leave (most of) the yeast behind...
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Lachouffe
Strong Belgian Ale
Munton's Premium Pilsner,
2x blackrock light malt
800g dextrose
20g Saaz hops pellets
Saflager yeast.
bubbling away at present, should be bottling in a few days time. expecting around 8%.
