Tracy’s Framboise- Batch 24 Bottled (Finally!)

Tracy's Framboise

Tonight we bottled Tracy’s Framboise that’s been sitting in the fermenter since March 1st.  All that time sitting there had me extremely curious as to how it would turn out, especially since the trub in the fermenter looked nasty.

Brett siphoning beer

Siphoned the beer into my bottling bucket, then took the final gravity, which came to 1.004.  Wow, talk about a lot of fermentation.  Almost all of the original 1.044 has been eaten up by those Belgium yeasts.  Alcohol came to 5.25% given that final gravity.

Nasty Looking Beer Trub

Brett prepping to take final gravity

The Hydrometer Reading

Once the final gravity was done I added the raspberry flavoring to the batch.

Adding raspberry extract to beer

Now, this presented a problem, not in terms of how much to add, but in terms of how much fermentable sugars are there.  If the syrup has some or a lot, then the beer can over ferment in the bottle.  If not any and I short the amount of bottling sugar, I won’t have well carbonated beer.  Doing what any trained scientist would do, I guessed.  Added all the extract, then used 1/3 cup corn sugar for bottling sugar.   A bit nervous, but hopefully all goes well.  I’ll keep checking on the bottles through the next few weeks.

Beer Yeast being pitched

Next, I pitched the yeast.  I added corn sugar to a tad bit of water, heated it up to dissolve, then added the yeast once the water got back down to reasonable temperatures.  The reason I’m pitching new yeast was that I’m pretty sure after all this time the old yeast is mostly gone from the beer, thus will need some fresh yeast for bottle conditioning.  I used Safale 33, a Belgian strain.  Thought I had a generic ale yeast instead, but this is what I had.

Bottling Tracy's Framboise

Now, it’s time to bottle.  Started bottling, using some nice, pretty red bottle caps I picked up.  The beer has a wonderful color to it, and the flavor at this point is very dry (given the amount of fermentation), and tart.  Not a lot of sweetness, which would be hard to do given my current setup, but good.  Can’t wait to see what it’s like in 2 weeks.

Framboise in clear bottle

Got quite a few bottles from this batch.  I hope Tracy loves this and treasures it!  It’s all for her!