Oct 21 2009
Pumpkin Ale Bottled!
On Monday evening, I finally got a chance to bottle my pumkin ale. As any of you who home brew know, bottling can be quite a project, especially when you’re working alone.
After washing and sanatizing bottles, transfering my beer from the secondary fermenters to the bottling bucket, and filling and capping all the bottles, I was beat. Bottling went fairly well, despite a few minor issues.
At some point, I misplaced my racking cane, so I had bottle directly from the bottling bucket, turning on and off the spigot each time. That slowed me down a bit, and I really need to remember to grab a new racking setup next time I’m at the brew store.
My other issue was that despite the fact that I’m sure I bought priming sugar, I couldn’t find it either. So, instead, I primed with honey, 6 tablespoons worth to be exact.
I disolved the honey in a little hot water, and then threw in 1/4 of a teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice. I’ve never seen a recipe call for adding flavoring at the priming stage, but I figured “what the heck?”
I ended up with 84 12 ounce bottles of beer. That’s a few less than I usually get from a 10 gallon batch, and I believe that was because I did a secondary fermentation and left a little beer behind each time to avoid getting any sludge in my beer.
Getting a few less beers, but getting a clearer brew seems like a trade-off I’m willing to make. The beers are now safely resting in the basement. They should be ready to try in about two weeks, which puts me right around the 1st or 2nd of November. Since I primed with honey, it’ll probably take a touch longer to get optimum carbonation, and the flavor will surely improve with a couple more weeks in the bottle.
So, the beer will be great to drink from mid-November through the holidays, after which time I’ll probably be ready to brew a winter ale…maybe a porter or stout.
I’ll report back on the beer once it’s ready to drink. One note, because I got only 84 beers, the total cost per beer was slightly over $1, still pretty reasonable compared to buying craft beers.
