My Time In the East

Bottled!!!

So, I delayed a couple of days for bottling the Pale Ale. But, now its in bottles.

That took about the first couple of hours this evening. Just in case you are wondering, it is bottled in standard 12oz bottles, 16oz bottles and 1.5 liter big bottles. It is now safely in the closet carbonating. Yes, these are naturally carbonated beer. I add a cup of Dry Malt Extract to 1 liter of water and boil for about 15 minutes. That mixture is placed at the bottom of the bottling container and the wort from the secondary fermentator is racked on to the priming sugar. From there into the bottles.

I'll have to wait a couple of weeks before it is ready to drink and is fully carbonated, but with any luck it should be ready by 4th of July weekend (weekday?). I must say that the test that I tasted of the Pale Ale was great; if I do say so myself. :)

I have also completed, as part of the remainder of the evening, the initial brewing of the Oktoberfest beer. It was an easier brew than then Pale Ale due to only one time for hop boiling (60 minutes) vice the Pale Ale which had three. The big test will to see if the liquid yeast pack survived the trip from Washington. It was shipped with an ice pack, but by the time I received the package the ice pack was completely melted. I'm not too concerned due to there being no yeast nutrition in the liquid pack so there wouldn't be any extra growth. The only issues may be a slow fermentation start due to fewer live yeast cells.

I'm now off to bed to sleep. I'll have to do the dishes tomorrow (some time)

posted by Unknown @ 10:33 PM