Kegging and Bottling the Wedding Brews…
This weekend I finally got around to bottling and kegging some of my brews. On Saturday I bottled I think the second full-mash that I’d made, which I think was a clone of Old Speckled, which I was considering for Basil and the Senator, but now will use for the Stud’s Stag (early July). It was good, a little bite to it, I think that’ll give it an interesting flavour. We’ll see!
(I might add, I am indebted to one of the Brewgroup suggesting the purchase of a pressure sprayer to aid with sterilising bottles. £1.50 from Wilkinsons, one spray of iodophor and you’re ready to bottle!)
I then kegged the first of B & Q’s wedding brews (given the original working title Basil Pale Ale 1), which was marvellous. I also transferred, what is BPA 4, into a keg to help it clear (this is the one where I pitched the wort onto the cake of BPA 3). It tasted very bland and I now regret my slack approach, but we’ll see.
On Sunday I moved on to BPA 2 and 3, and was pleased with both of them. I made up a hop tea for BPA 3 as during that brew I had run out of gas near the end, so missed the aroma hops. I boiled 10g fuggles for around 5 mins in the priming syrup. Again I was really happy with both of those brews.
In the end I primed with around 70g sugar dilted in 200ml boiling water, though was frustrated to find some of my brews were much longer than others, so should probably have varied a bit more!