Bottling the Coopers Stout

I found a few hours and got down to washing the bottles, using the new squirting bottle cleaner Chrissie got me for Christmas, and my trusty bottle tree. It all seemed to work very well, plus  the bottles from amazon seemed to be well cleaned already.

To estimate the alcohol percentage I used (OG-FG)*0.129. This gives 1040-1006 = 34 * 0.129 = 4.4%.

Darren kindly offered to help, so with clean bottles and equipment I proceed to fill the bottles, and Darren put on the caps. We raced though it, with a few of the usual overflowed bottles on occasion when I wasn't paying attention.

All done. I will give them a few days in the house where its nice and warm before moving them somewhere cooler.

Last measurement of coopers Stout

I took a final measurement, though to be honest I figured that at 1006 2 days ago, it would surely be finished now.

I took another picture.

It looks very similar to before, so Im sure its done.

Bottling time as soon as I have a couple of hours.

Second gravity reading

Took a second reading a day later. I also took a pic to make it easier to compare. The top of the bubbles clearly are at 1004 so I guess we are St about 1006.

This reading is definite while yesterday's I wasn't certain of so I will see tomorrow.

I noticed some worrying white areas on the top of the beer and decided to taste a few drops from the hydrometer. It didn't taste good. It's hard to tell with such a small amount but it seemed very salty. I fear for it. Will try some properly before bottling.

First Gravity reading on Coopers Stout

Its been 4 nights since kicking off the Coopers Stout. My new bottles and bottle caps have arrived and Im just waiting on the bottle capper which is on its way, so I wanted to see if the beer was getting near to bottling time. I ran the hydrometer under boiling water from the kettle and dropped it in the beer. It dropped to the point i couldnt quite see the black section - so between 1010 and 1008, I forgot to take a picture. Im not that surprised, as the room has been very warm for the most part so I expected it to go quickly. I will take anotehr reading tonight and another the next night. Im busy Wednesday night but could thenbottle it on Thursday if its stable.

Starting again

So its been many years since my last home brew, as this blog shows. The motivation to finally get back into it is for my wedding. Its all about people bring their own made things and favourite things, so it seems only fitting that I should bring some home brew myself. therefore I'm back at it.

The long break does bring with it some challenges. First of all I have forgotten everything I learnt, so thats no ideal. I've been back to googling things and following the exact instructions. Secondly all my gear hasnt been touched in years. I toyed with just buying a new starter kit with new bucket, stirrer, tubing etc, but given the urgency of needing several brews inside a few months I wanted to get started straight away.
 
 I chose a Coopers Stout from the packs I got for Christmas to start with. The good part of this is its the cheapest so if I ruin it, its not quite as painful. The bad news is its a one can kit and I'd never done one of those before. I also don't have quick access to anything but white granulated sugar, so opted to add the full 1kg of white sugar as instructed, rather than brewing sugar, MLE or any of the other things google talks about.

 I had bought some fresh sanitiser, and set to work on swishing round freshly booiled water and then some cold and then sanitising power, and then filled it up to allow the whole bucket to soak along with the hydrometer, brush, stirrer and thermometer. I think there is a high probability that this brew fails due to something getting in the beer somewhere, what with the old gear and the faffing as I haven't done it in ages. We shall see. When I finally started I poured the 1kg of granulated sugar into the bucket, and poured a kettle of boiling water. I then reboiled the kettle so that I could pour some over the tin and stirrer and then opened the tin and poured that in. Even after filling the tin with boiling water to get more out it was obvious that lots was left in the tin still. After another boiling water I opted to fill the rest of the bucket by constantly refilling the tin with cold water. This worked with the tin being mostly clean on the inside in the end. Before getting to the fill level on the bucket I took a temperature reading and found it was 21 and still falling slightly. Its very cold outside at the moment so the tap water would have been very cold. Given I was only filling with cold water and needed to add another few litres yet I boiled the kettle again, twice, and along with some more cold water while waiting I tested again at 23 and when finished it was 24. It took longer than I would like but it was done.

There was a pretty big head from alll the splashing and stirring but I seem to recall from the back of my memory that you were supposed to get as much air in as possible at this stage. Next I took a gravity reading, which was really tough given the huge head, but after some faffing I think it was pretty close to being bang on 140. I then nearly made a dreadful error - I put the lid on and started packing up... only to then see the yeast (if I hadn't brought it in half way through the job I might have forgotten completely). I sprinkled this in, and gave it a heck of a stir ot try to get it all mixed in. There didnt seem to be any floating on top so i figured I was finally done.

Now I will try to leave it alone for a few days, but keep an eye on the room temperature at least - its been fairly cold recently so I'm now wondering if I should be keeping the heating on a lot of the time.

Bottled the Eastern Ale

The weekend before last I finally got round to bottling the Woodforde's Eastern Ale. I didn't realise I hadn't blogged the bottling until someone added a comment asking how it went, so here are the details...

Before statring anything I took a gravity reading, and confirmed the reading hadn't shifted from its 1.010 position a few days ago, so the bottling was good to go... I measured out the 60 grams (I think) of sugar and mixed it with a small amount of freshly boiled hot water in a jug. I then microwaved the jug to get it back to boiling and then placed the jug in the fridge to cool down asap.

I decided to use the dishwasher to prepare my bottles again. I think the lazy patr of me is prepared to keep doing this until it goes wrong... Although some of the bottles were quite old, I decided that I would first fill each bottle with boiling water and leave it for 15 minutes. If after a quick shake and rinse, the bottle still looked dirty to the eye, the bottle was put in the recycling. If it looked clean, I put it in the dishwasher. I eventually ended up with 48 (hopefully) clean bottles).

I soaked the tube, and bottle tops in hot water with sanitizing powder, and rinsed them ready to go. Once the sugar was cool, I gently mixed it into the beer and left it for another 20 minutes. I laid out the caps, capper, the labels I had prepared, and some milk along with the pastry brush and I was set.



I connected the tube up and started to fill the first bottle. The process flowed nicely, and here are a few action shots:







Less than an hour later, I had 43 bottles of beer ready to put in the 'Brewery'.



I am looking forward to this one. I have wanted to do a nice summer ale for ages. In fact this was supposed to be for this summer, but my enforced absence from brewing means it might now turn out to be a relaxing Xmas ale ;-)

Woodforde's Eastern Ale down to 1.010

I am intending to bottle the Woodforde's Easterne Ale this coming weekend, so I thought I would check how its doing...



I took this reading to be 1.010, which I think is as low as I have had a beer go, so I am very pleased. This is the first summer time brewing I have done, so I suspect that explains this success. I will check on the brew again later in the week, and then before bottling - probably on Saturday.