As promised, today I will announce the brewery for the month of February. Without further delay, I am declaring February to be “Great Divide Brewing Co. Month!” Kudos to any of you that guessed and/or expected that. I will be posting as much information as possible about the brewery throughout the month (probably starting Tuesday). The one constant will be that each Tuesday and Friday the beer review will be of a beer from Great Divide. The reviews will certainly be fun for me, but I also look forward to learning a bit more about one of my favorites. Hopefully you will enjoy it as well!
Now on to bottling the Cherry Dunkelweizen . . .
Letting the bottles air dry a bit.
Since I posted a video of the bottling process for the Blueberry Chocolate Stout a few days ago, I will again just provide details for this beer on what was not shown. Be sure to take a look at that video for the other processes that went on or if you haven’t already done so.
The cherries left behind.
As usual I boiled 4.5 oz of corn sugar in 2 cups of water, cooled it, then added it to the bottling bucket before racking the wort over. The carbonation levels have varied a bit with the batches, so I may start experimenting with the amount of corn sugar. However, I think that I will take a beer that is slightly under carbonated to exploding bottles, so I don’t plan on adjusting too much.
Racking to the bottling bucket.
The final hydrometer reading left it with a specific gravity of about 1.0142, giving it approximately 4.56% ABV. It was down only slightly from when it was transferred to secondary, so I guess adding the cherries did not affect that aspect much. This was my first time using real fruit in secondary fermentation only, so I was not sure what exactly to expect.
My very scientific labeling system.
After tasting the sample that was pulled off, the nose had a bit of fruit and it was very smooth with some sweetness to it. The cherries definitely imparted much of their character and I think it will be pretty darn good when carbonated. It should be ready for a sampling in the very near future.
Sample help up to the light.
Stay tuned for the official review!
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