After the frustration that was bottling my Pomegranate Hefeweizen, I was not exactly looking forward to doing the same with the Saison so soon after. The good thing was that even though I was not equipped to keg it just yet, I did save quite a few of the 22 ounce bottles for the occasion. Filling fewer bottles is at least one step in the right direction for this part of the process. That and it seemed that a Saison deserved something more than a plain old 12 once bottle to live in.
More large bottles makes for less work.
Now on to the bottling details of this one . . .
As usual, there are not too many additional details to share with the bottling process (especially when nothing goes wrong), but if you have more interest in how it happens check out the video for the Blueberry Chocolate Stout bottling. There was nothing to add at bottling this time, but that video will give you the gist of it.
Always seems to be a different color coming through the siphon.
As usual I boiled ¾ cup of corn sugar in 2 cups of water, cooled it, then added it to the bottling bucket before racking the beer over. This was all after rinsing the sanitized bottles and bottling equipment and allowing them to air-dry a bit. Having more 22 ounce bottles in the mix made for fewer bottles overall and therefore slightly less work this time.
The final hydrometer reading left it with a specific gravity of about 1.0132 which was just about spot on to where it should have been and gave it a final ABV of roughly 5.92%. That number was very slightly down from when it was racked to secondary fermentation, but I never consider my readings exact.
Starting to learn from previous messes.
The taste and aroma did not change much from the sample I tried before racking to secondary. It had some banana in the aroma with just a bit of spice. It was light and incredibly easy drinking with some notes of lemon and some slight bitterness toward the finish. I am pretty confident that this will turn out very well when finally carbonated.
Next up as I wait to sample this one will be racking and eventually bottling the Black Ale that has already been brewed.
Nothing to do now but wait.
Cousin Adam got a bottle of the Saison before its official release and I think that he will get to it before I actually review it. Regardless, stay tuned for the official review!
Ahem…where was your Sanitation Supervisor????
Oh he was definitely in the room, but sometimes he is not in the mood for a photo op. He is all about the beer and doesn’t want to take the focus away from that!