alhenderson
Active Member
I posted on one of the forums here a while back asking advice for my next brew (#4 - still a rookie!). Coopers Canadian Blonde was mentioned, I liked the sound of it so duly placed an order. My previous brews have been more complete sets (e.g. Youngs American IPA) where you get everything you need in the box, so this one was a little more of a challenge.
Anyway, I set the brew going last weekend, and after confirming that the SG had settled down over two days (to 1.012) I prepared for bottling. Not used to this speed of fermentation, as the Youngs kits I have done in the past have all taken a good couple of months to ferment. I guess that could be a difference in the kit - the instructions for the Coopers did say it would be about 6 or 7 days, so they were bang on.
Following my last brew, I invested in a little bottler to make life easier when bottling. Prior to doing it in anger, I thought I'd better at least try it out. Glad I did, because with what I think was the recommended set up the flow was incredibly slow - I'd still be bottling at that rate. Following some trial and error, I ended up putting the bottler on the end of a plastic pipe attached to the tap on my barrel - don't know why that should have made a difference. This is the setup I ended up with:
With that out of the way it was time to get to work. I had also decided to bottle this brew into smaller bottles to make them easier to drink without committing to emptying a bigger one all at once. That meant a lot more sterilising, which was a pain. All ready to go:
I'm sure we've all seen pictures of a brew prior to bottling, but for the record, here's what mine looked like :mrgreen:
The bottler really was a brilliant piece of kit, much cleaner and faster than just shoving the pipe into the bottles and turning taps on and off. I had one minor spillage when part of the pipe came out of the top of the bottler, but apart from that it was flawless.
I'm hoping the seals on these Kilner bottles hold. They were fine for the last brew I did, but that last couple of bottles I had seemed to have gone off, were flat and odd tasting. Had been several months by that point, though, I just need to drink quicker!
First bottle out of the barrel has been put aside as a tester, as have a couple of the bottles I filled towards the end where I had a lot of air in the pipework.
The colour is lighter than I was expecting. Maybe that's normal for this kit, might be something to do with the honey I put in at the start of fermentation. Did that on the recommendation of someone on here. Now I think about it, I added honey as well as the brew enhancer, hope the honey wasn't meant to be instead!
And that's it really, took me a few hours to do the bottling, mainly due to sterilising the bottles. Glad I batch primed or it would have taken even longer. Looking forward to first taste in a couple of weeks.
Thanks for reading down this far :drunk:
Al.
Anyway, I set the brew going last weekend, and after confirming that the SG had settled down over two days (to 1.012) I prepared for bottling. Not used to this speed of fermentation, as the Youngs kits I have done in the past have all taken a good couple of months to ferment. I guess that could be a difference in the kit - the instructions for the Coopers did say it would be about 6 or 7 days, so they were bang on.
Following my last brew, I invested in a little bottler to make life easier when bottling. Prior to doing it in anger, I thought I'd better at least try it out. Glad I did, because with what I think was the recommended set up the flow was incredibly slow - I'd still be bottling at that rate. Following some trial and error, I ended up putting the bottler on the end of a plastic pipe attached to the tap on my barrel - don't know why that should have made a difference. This is the setup I ended up with:
With that out of the way it was time to get to work. I had also decided to bottle this brew into smaller bottles to make them easier to drink without committing to emptying a bigger one all at once. That meant a lot more sterilising, which was a pain. All ready to go:
I'm sure we've all seen pictures of a brew prior to bottling, but for the record, here's what mine looked like :mrgreen:
The bottler really was a brilliant piece of kit, much cleaner and faster than just shoving the pipe into the bottles and turning taps on and off. I had one minor spillage when part of the pipe came out of the top of the bottler, but apart from that it was flawless.
I'm hoping the seals on these Kilner bottles hold. They were fine for the last brew I did, but that last couple of bottles I had seemed to have gone off, were flat and odd tasting. Had been several months by that point, though, I just need to drink quicker!
First bottle out of the barrel has been put aside as a tester, as have a couple of the bottles I filled towards the end where I had a lot of air in the pipework.
The colour is lighter than I was expecting. Maybe that's normal for this kit, might be something to do with the honey I put in at the start of fermentation. Did that on the recommendation of someone on here. Now I think about it, I added honey as well as the brew enhancer, hope the honey wasn't meant to be instead!
And that's it really, took me a few hours to do the bottling, mainly due to sterilising the bottles. Glad I batch primed or it would have taken even longer. Looking forward to first taste in a couple of weeks.
Thanks for reading down this far :drunk:
Al.
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