Weekend Aftermath

The weekend bottling process turned out good and bad.

First off, the good...

Bottled the dunkelweizen with no problems. The stockpile of beer is increasing. The Sam Adams Summer Ale Clone is the best beer we've made to date..

Stockpile!

Now the bad...

Bottling the Belgian Dubbel this weekend turned out to be one gigantic clusterfuck. Where to begin...

1. Short on bottles
2. Siphon tube was fucked up
3. Some bottles got fucked up (see pictures)
4. The capper makes sounds of glass crunching
5. Broke another siphon tube (which has been repaired..)
6. Broke the necks off some of the bottles

Broken bottles full of Dubbel

A sad, sad picture

Yes, the capper was literally cutting the neck of the bottles completely off. In the first picture, you can see two bottle caps still sealed on the broken neck (Yes, I saved them as keepsakes)

So yeah, the Belgian Dubbel didn't go as smooth as expected, but there is enough there to get hammered. There are 13 bottles of Belgian Dubbel that are 22oz. So no worries! More to come with the Memorial Day weekend ahead.

Dunkelweizen - Fermenting

Below are some pictures of the dunkelweizen fermenting. This batch took about 48 hours to starting kicking off the fermenting process. It has been going strong since then...

About 48 hours in

Close up of the blow-off hose

Dunkelweizen and Belgian Dubbel (beer porn!)

Dunkelweizen

That's right... On Friday, I took a much needed vacation day from work and did a solo brew. I decided to go with a dunkelweizen, mainly for 2 reasons...

1.) I've never had a dunkelweizen

2.) I love wheat beers.

The brewing process went smoothly. Everything looked and smelled wonderful. I also picked up a 5 Gallon Better Bottle carboy (plastic and much cheaper in price than glass). Of course, the bottle did not have the Gallon marks on the side, so I topped it off to where I thought was 5 gallons. This batch may be short a few bottles of 2 cases, but no need to worry, there will be plenty to go around!

Wheat Malt Extract warming up

Steeping grains at 160 degrees

Adding hops to the wort
Dog & Kettle