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.