Homebrew Blog

I just finished bottling my Caribou Slobber. It is an American Brown Ale. I had a heck of a time with this bottling for some reason. As I was sanitizing bottles I found one that was cleaned and put away, but wasn't really clean. It had a nasty ring of mold at the bottom of the bottle. Apparently I drank the beer and then didn't rinse it and put it away. YUCK! I tossed the bottle as I seem to have more than enough lately.

I also tried a new way of filling the bottles. I generally I attach a 4 foot hose the spigot and put a bottling wand on the other end. Today I cut about 2 inches of tubing and attached that to the spigot and the bottling wand to the other end. So I could stand at the bucket and fill basically right from the spigot. It took me a few minutes to get the tubing right and everything to fit. But in the end I really like being right at the bucket. It made getting the last bit of beer out of the bucket easier, I just had to tip the bucket forward and fill the bottle.

The next issue I had was the FG of the beer. I had an original gravity of 1.050 and a what I thought was a high FG of 1.020. I was going for somewhere under 1.015, or at least that is what I am used to. But according the Danstar website the Windsor yeast produces a high final gravity. So I was at least more comfortable with the fact that this beer full fermented. But the downside is that I only have 3.91% ABV.

The taste test was fantastic. It also had a great color. I can hardly wait to try a bottle or two of this in a week or 10 days.