Bottling Month

We bottled the Raspberry Russian Imperial Stout today and yielded a full 2-cases. We lef the raspberries on the beer for 7 days and then cold-crashed (instead of the initial plan of 10 days) as I wanted to make sure the raspberry flavor didnt become too intense. I did not get a chance to taste the beer today, but it did smell really really good. We wont be drinking this beer until at the earliest September, but likely later when Elise can enjoy one with everyone else.

On Saturday we'll bottle the Anniversary BW which of course will not be opened until Jan 3 2012. We plan on wax-dipping the bottles again and hopefully this will be done sooner than we did last year. We havent decided what to do about the wax color. We still have plenty of the red on hand, but then it will be hard to differntiate between vintages if they are all red unless we make some more marks on them. We'll see.

The following week we will be bottling the Biere de Garde. I tasted it early last week and was not very pleased with the beer. It is pretty boring, just kinda sweet and light. Because of this we are only going to bottle 1 gallon of the 5, and then bottle 1 gallon (of the 2) of the 100% Brett B beer. The remaining 4 gallons of Biere de Garde will then be added to the 1 gallon of Brett B to blend them. We'll let that sit for 2-3 months so the brett can work on the Biere de Garde and then we will bottle. I'm very excited about this blend as it should taste like New Belgium's Biere de Marrs which is a Biere de Garde that has some very nice funky brett characteristics to it.

The last week of the month we will bottle the Tripel. As of last week it was at 9.97% alcohol and hopefully during the next couple of weeks it will drop a little a few more points so the beer is nice and dry. This once again, will require several months in the bottle before it is ready to drink. We have a decent amount of beer on hand right now and we are making a pale ale next month, so hopefully we dont run out of beer to drink while all the big brews are aging.

I am going to start trying to post tasting reviews along with pictures of the finished brews as I realize once the beer is bottled, no one really hears from it again. Our newest versions of the brown ale and IPA are ready, so those, along with our porter, will likely be first.