Last Friday (12/11) I was finally able to get to bottling my two batches of beer, my Holiday Cheer and my Unspoken Passion Imperial Stout (batches 33 and 34). I had originally planned on transferring the stout to a secondary to help it settle, but with my time limitations I just went straight to bottling.
Now, doing this all by myself took way too long. I started getting things ready to bottle at 7:30pm and wasn’t finished until 12:00 am.
Holiday Cheer Beer Label
Bottling the Holiday Cheer, the final gravity came out to 1.016 for an alcohol content by volume of 5.775%. The flavor was oh so yummy, but the orange peel bitterness was more pronounced than last years batch. I am really hoping it tones down after some aging, as that was the one thing last year that I wanted mellowed as well. At least I know now how to better gauge the bottled orange peel spice.
Unspoken Passion beer label
Now, the Unspoken Passion was more of a pain. The one beer I’ve had the most trouble with.
I began transferring the beer into my bottling bucket, which is 6.5 gallons. I topped the bucket off and had a bit of liquid left still. I used 1 cup of corn sugar for bottle conditioning rather than 3/4 cup due to the volume. Final gravity came out way too high, 1.030 for a final alcohol of 7.09%. I expected this to be much higher. I did lose a lot of malt extract with my boil over, though. Also had I transferred it to a secondary and let it finish fermenting there it would have no doubt been lower.
The flavor on this was … wow! Once it finishes bottle fermenting it’s going to be an awesome beer. Now, if only Santa would bring me a bigger brew kettle, then I won’t have troubles with this beer in the future!
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