Belgium Wit Beer: Bottled Beer – September 2, 2006
Today I bottled the batch of Belgium Wit Beer. I accidently broke my first bottle during capping; it broke off at the neck. I was able to save the beer but was one bottle short. This was the first time that I actually didn’t have enough sanitized bottles available; I had only sanitized 50 bottles.
When bottling, I racked my beer from my glass carboy into a bottling bucket, a 6-gal food grade plastic bucket with spigot, and then placed the bottling bucket on a kitchen counter. I attached my siphon hose to the male end of the spigot and attached my bottling wand to the other. I used the open door of my dishwasher as my bottling station; this greatly contained the spill-over mess. The dishwasher door wasn’t appropriate for the bottle capping stadge, however, and I just lined up the bottles on my kitchen floor, capping them in groups of 10-15.
When my leftover beer, I took the oportunity to take a sample of the batch. The beer was as good as flat, room-temperature beer could be, but not bad. I expect much improvement during the next three weeks in the bottle. The orange and corriander flavors had melded nicely in the secondary and where not as pronouced as before; this was a good thing. The beer did achieve the hazy, cloudy appearance that is typical with this style.
Having exended the primary fermentation by a week, I hope that their will be enough yeast in suspension to properly carbonate the beer in the bottles.
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