Bottling the Sherwood's Forest Bitter

Time at last to get my 4th brew bottled...



I started by taking another gravity reading. My intention was to bottle whatever the reading, given I knew it was down at 1.013 a week and a half ago, so it should have had plenty of time to finish fermenting.



As you can see, the reading is still 1.013. I was a little surprised by this, as I thought that with the warmer weather, my problems of not getting brews down to the 1.010 target would disappear, but seemingly not. I was also a little worried that this meant that the brew had been sat for at the very least one and a half weeks having finished fermenting. Given the autolysis problems with the Linthwaite Light, I am perhaps over sensitive to leaving it in the bucket, but I just hope that this brew turns out fine.

I decided to try out an alternative to the painstaking task of sterilising bottles - putting the bottles in the dishwasher. Someone suggested this to me, and given I had only just emptied the bottles of their previous contents and had thoroughly rinsed them, I felt it was worth experimenting. (Please forgive the poor quality photo - the camera is full again so its from my phone.)



So with the bottles cleaning themselves (well almost), I got my 60 grams of brewing sugar dissolved in a little boiling water and microwaved it back to the boil, before putting it in the fridge to get it cool asap. I brought the brewing bucket into the kitchen and connected up the sanitised tube and let it hang into the cleaned washing up bowl. I knocked up some labels and a saucer of milk, and sanitised the crown caps.

I took a small sample from the tap on the bucket both to taste, and to ensure the tap was clear. It came out very cloudy to start with, and didn't wow me with its flavour, but it was unpleasant, and didn't seem to show any signs of the dreaded burnt rubber taste.

As soon as the sugar had cooled I gently stirred that into the beer and left while the bottles finished. Some time later they were all clean, dry and cooled and it was time to get the conveyor belt going. Unfortunately I was being pressured for time, given I had taken over the kitchen and it was rapidly approaching meal time, so I rather rushed the job, resulting in more than a couple of overflows as I filled the bottles to quickly while I capped and labelled the previous bottle. I learnt that the only thing more annoying than overflowing a bottle of your precious beer, is having the next bottle overflow as well, while trying to quickly clear up after the previous overflow and cap and label it too.

Anyway, at last I had 43 bottles of Sherwood's Forest Bitter, and hopefully it will take after the Stout that I am currently enjoying, rather than the Light that the fish in the channel are now probably breathing in.