Today was bottling day for my "Act of Gourd" pumpkin-spiced ale. I realized I haven't done a bottling blog in a while, so I thought I would provide some insight into how this works. more...

21 days ago, I brewed a new recipe, inspired by BJs' Jeremiah Red: an Irish-style Red ale which I'm dubbing Irish Red Dawn, for reasons that are a bit mysterious, even to me... more...

Today was bottling day for my newest recipe: Nuclear Winter White IPA. Since this was another small batch (2.5 gallons), I was able to fill fourteen 12-ounce bottles and six 22-ounce bottles, with exactly enough for the last bottle. more...

It was bottling day for my "two dark beers" Pico brew session. No serving kegs for these batches, bottles this time. Racked to a bucket with the priming sugar, and thence to bottles: 4 22-ounce bottles and 2 12-ounce bottles. For each, There was plenty of leftover for tasting, probably enough where I could have had two more 12-ounce bottles. more...

It's been 1.5 months since I racked the non-JAOM mead batches to secondary, so I decided to bottle them and let them continue conditioning (aging) in bottles. more...

OK, two months ago I started a 1-gallon batch of a mead recipe called Joe's Ancient Orange Mead. Typically one bottles after 2 months, and it also happens to be Learn How to Homebrew Day, so I decided to bottle my JAOM batch. Super easy bottling session, since it was only a 1-gallon carboy, and there was quite a bit on the lees; as a result, there were only 6 bottles, and I used up one for tasting and measuring specific gravity (1.016). more...

OK, the second batch of Taupo Eruption Pale Ale was finished carbonating on Sunday (kinda over-carbonated, actually), so I cold-crashed it then. Today I poured one out after a long day at work, and the results were pretty darn good, if I do say so myself! It was a slow careful pour, but even still it had a decent head. The nose fairly oozed Nelson Sauvin, and the flavour was like Sierra Nevada, but with a definite twist in the hops. Definitely not bad! more...

I brewed another batch of my ESB back on April 22nd, first batch in a few months as I've been busy. I made a bit of a rookie error, leaving the carboy uncovered in a room that gets a bit of morning sun, so this batch might turn out a bit skunky; we shall see. After a week of primary, I transferred it to our new place, and jostling/moving the carboy much is also something one typically does not do with a fermenting beer. To cap it off, we have a couple days of greater than 80-degree weather, which also isn't great for ESB yeast. I don't have high hopes for this poor little batch, but it's a good way to get my feet wet again after a few months off. more...

You say Boxing Day, I say bottling day! I was overdue on my IPA, it has nine days on dry-hops, but what with xmas and all, this was the first chance I had... more...