Blog :: I've got the world by the (long) tail

My Instapunditification^TM continues apace. Sunday I went back out to my friend's house to bottle the beer we had brewed two weeks before. We made three batches: Pale Ale, Wheat Beer, and Coffee Stout (with freshly roasted coffee contributed by yours truly!) It's hard to say how the beers will be based on the warm flat taste I got, but my suspicion is that the Coffee Stout is going to be really good. They should be sufficiently carbonated by Thanksgiving to allow for consumption so I'll let you know how it turns out.

Bottling is definitely a hassle. Basically we sterilised all the bottles by dipping them in a solution and boiled the caps. Then we carefully siphoned the beer from the carboy in which it brewed, avoiding all the yeasty sludge at the bottom, to a sterilised container. Finally we siphoned from the container into each bottle, and immediately capped the bottle. This was quite the process for our 15 gallons of beer! (Not to worry - my share was only a couple of 12 packs worth and this is still about a years supply for me... I tend to be more of a red-wine-with-pasta kinda guy.) Anyways, I wonder if it would be possible to Nano-brew (eg a gallon at a time) and mini-keg the batch right into the fridge. I'll have to check if someone has the supplies for that sort of thing. I could get into it on that scale...

PS - I'm trying to pick out a name for the Coffee Stout. Do you think Alexander Mack would disown me if I called it Dunker Stout?

Posted on November 14th 2006, 09:27 PM