All Grain Christmas Beer - Bottled

Well, after a week closed up in a secondary fermenting bin dry hopping along with a muslin bag of Bramling Cross hops I got my all grain homebrew Christmas Beer bottled.

Loving the smell and really liking the colour. A taste revealed subtle Christmassy flavours, not overpowering and very balanced with the maltiness and hops.

The bottles are spending a week wrapped up warm and will then be moved to the cellar to condition out of sight and hopefully out of mind until nearer Christmas.

AG#2 Courage Directors - Bottled :)

The gravity hasn't shifted from 1.010 (making it 5.5% ABV) for three days so I moved the FV onto the lounge bar last night and let it rest and settle overnight.

Racked it off into my sterilized HLT this morning to mix with 80g of malt extract dissolved in 250ml water (according to priming instructions in the BYOBRA book) and hooked up the bottle filler stick and some tubing to the tap.

Sterilized bottles draining

Transferring beer from Fermenter to HLT (sterilized) to mix with priming solution

The tap on the HLT worked really well coupled with the bottling stick I got. Nice, air free transfer to the bottles.

Shiny new crown capper. I went for the table top version as it wasn't much dearer than the hand held type, which looked a little flimsy to me.

The crown capper worked really well but I shall be bolting it to a wooden base that can be clamped to the work area next time.

and off we go...

Two lots of bottles, 20 x 330ml and 26 of these 500ml

Ahh, that would be me

BEEEERRRRRRRSSSSSS!!!!!

Safely packed away to condition

Yeast that was left behind in the fermenter. Enough for 3 maybe 4  future brews.