UPDATE: Belgian Witbier bottle conditioning

I finally got around to bottling the Belgian Witbier, which had been sitting neglected in a corner of my room for five and half weeks. Because I am not one to rack to a secondary fermenter, unless necessary for processes like dry-hopping, I was a little worried that this batch may have picked up some unfavorable flavors from sitting on the yeast cake for so long. Generally, from what I have read, it is fine to ferment in the same vessel for up to four weeks, but after four weeks you risk adding some funk to your beer.

Like I said, I got a little worried that the witbier was going to taste and/or smell like farts, so I did some snooping around a few different forums. Sure enough there was plenty of people saying never let a beer sit in primary longer than two weeks, while others swear their best beers sat for six weeks (for whatever reasons). I chose to believe the latter... 

When I opened the lid of the bucket for the first time since January 11, the smell was way better than expected. To be honest, I had kind of forgot about this beer, but after smelling and tasting it, I feel like this could be one of my best ones yet. It definitely had a prominent grapefruit smell from adding the zest in at flame-out. And the flavor was sweet with oranges with earthy and floral undertones from the chamomile and coriander. The color was the best part. It was a very pale yellow with a lot of haze, which made it appear almost white. Usually brewers are doing everything they can to make as clear of a beer as possible (one of the reasons people vouch for racking to secondary), but witbiers are supposed to be cloudy and appear white, which is why the are often times referred to as "white ales.". But I digress...

Come bottling day I slaved away cleaning bottles in my bathroom and was ready to actually start the bottling process. I boiled two cups of water and added 4.7 oz of priming sugar (dextrose) for two minutes. The sugar water cooled for a bit on the stove while I did some cleaning and sanitizing, and then I put the water into the bottling bucket. Right after I got the siphon all ready, I looked into the bottling bucket and thought to myself, "Hm...Looks like there is some water on the bottom from the sanitizer." Naturally, I dumped it out, and immediately after realized what I had done...

Luckily cane sugar, which is sold at grocery stores, can be used as a substitute for the dextrose (aka corn sugar) from homebrew stores. I ended up getting highly refined baker's cane sugar because it supposedly adds the least amount of flavors. Depending on the beer and what flavors you are going for, honeys, brown sugar, and dry malt extract are just a few things that can be used as priming sugars. The brown sugar is intriguing...

Despite the sugar fiasco, things seem to have gone well. I am curious to see if I can notice the difference in priming sugars, but who knows. The gravity read 1.003, which is lower than expected. This will hopefully turn out as delicious as I wanted it to be.

UPDATE: Red Ale (HB#2) now in bottles

Bottling day set up

I realized very late last night that today was bottling day for the Red Ale (HB#2). In a hurry, I filled my plastic tub with water and Oxyclean, and I soaked as many bottles as I could find, which happened to be just enough. Today was a long day that started with de-labeling and scrubbing the bottles and ended with transferring and bottling. The process was more or less the same as the Foreign Extra Stout (HB#1), so I will not go into too much detail on the bottling process.

Cracked bottle

Great amber red color

We did have a few bottles break on us when being capped. The broken bottles, on top of only having 4.5 gallons of beer (instead of the usual 5 gallons), produced only thirty-six 12 oz bottles and three 22 oz bottles. It is a little under the typical forty-eight 12 oz-ers, but like I said, the volume was a half gallon less than usual (because some was lost on brew day when transferring from the kettle to the carboy), so it was expected.

The gravity reading was spot on the target at 1.013, so everything seemed to have gone as planned. In two weeks, this beer should be ready to drink....but I will probably crack one open in a week just to see how it is coming along.

UPDATE: Homebrew #1 (Foreign Extra Stout) now in bottles

This past Friday (11/4) after the first day of snowboarding of the year, I racked Homebrew #1: Foreign Extra Stout into bottles.

A few days prior I soaked all the bottles I collected (big thanks to Andrew) in ~10 gallons of water with 2 tbsps of OxyClean in it to get any sediment out of the inside and try and get the labels off. I let them soak for about 36 hours and then took each one and scrubbed the label/glue off with a sponge and used a bottle cleaning brush to get the inside clean. The de-labeling actually went a lot smoother then planned. Avery bottles, for example, would come out of the soak free of labels and with no glue, so little to no attention was needed. However, others, like Rogue, must have been glued on with rubber cement because I had to pick at them with my finger nail pulling off tiny little chunks at a time. I don't think I will be wasting my time with bottles like that if I can help it.

Come bottling day I boiled 5oz of corn sugar in 2 cups of water for 5 minutes. The purpose of the sugar is to add a little more "food" for the yeast to eat, and since the bottles will be capped air tight, no gasses can escape thus creating carbonation. It is important that the sugar water is mixed well through out the wort, but at the same time you want to add as little oxygen as possible, so I dumped the sugar water into the racking bucket first and then siphoned the wort in a whirlpool manner in order to stir things up with out aerating it. Once the wort was transferred it was time to start bottling.

I hooked up the bottling tool to the bottling bucket's racking spigot and began filling bottles. With the bottling tool, you just fill the beer bottle to the top and then when you pull to bottling tool out it is at the right level. Then the bottle is capped and that is it. Chris and I repeated this 45 times until all the bottles were filled.

With a 5 gallon batch I should have technically got 48 bottles, but somehow I miscounted and only cleaned 46, and on top of that a screw top got in their somehow which cannot be recapped. So I ended up with 45 bottles. I also donated one bottle's worth to science to measure the gravity and taste. The gravity was right on point at 1.014 and despite not being carbonated tasted quite delicious. It had some very good chocolaty notes to it.

The bottle filler. When the pin at the end is pushed against a bottle, it lets beer flow.

Filling bottles.

Mr. Bottle Capper

Foreign Extra Stout in test tube

So now the bottles need to condition for 2 weeks and carbonate before I crack one open. They will probably taste even better after 3-4 weeks once the flavors and everything settle.

Patience is a virtue in homebrewing.