Racking and bottling.

My "Nelsons Revenge" finally stopped bubbling yesterday afternoon after 5 dutiful days in the outside toilet.  The fermenter had an encouraging "mat" of yeast at the bottom and when I unplugged the airlock I got a wonderful whiff of fresh beer, carbon dioxide and depleted yeast.  It was ready for bottling!

Racking the beer out of a fermenter can be a long and arduous process.  Bottles needs to be rinsed, cleaned and then disinfected, as does the racking cane itself, the bottle tops and anything else than comes into contact with the hallowed liquid.  This took me an hour in itself.

Since the weather was so nice I set my little brewing factory out in the garden.  My 4 year old could not resist helping, so he got the job of spooning in half a teaspoon of caster sugar.  This is added to encourage a second fermentation in the bottle, which catalyzes a little extra fizz.

Beer Factory

It took us a further hour or so to fill and cap 40 bottles of amber nectar.  This is a monotonous procedure and rather akin to wrapping up Christmas presents - i.e it's boring, but you can't wait to get at what is inside.

My last batch of beer was very disappointing - it had little flavour or bitterness and to my rather expert opinion it was hugely lacking in the booze department.  I really hope these problems do not exhibit themselves in this particular brew as I think I am ready to down tools if it happens again.  You cannot imagine the despair of waiting 3 weeks to discover your beer has as much flavour as a 39p bottle of Tesco shandy.

A right bevvy of beauties

I now must wait for around 2 weeks for the beer to clear a bit, and for the secondary fermentation to halt.  That's good news though as I'm trying to stop drinking Monday - Thursday.  Too many summers of too much beer and too little exercise have conspired to expand my considerable girth.  It is time to sort out my gut.