As of today, the pale ale I brewed with only Citra hops had been fermenting for 12 days. To me, that meant only one thing: bottling time!
The bottle tree, fully loaded with 45 bottles
I got a good deal on a hundred bottles the other day, and treated myself to a bottle tree for rinsing and drying them, so today I sterilised, rinsed and then filled 43 of them.
Before any of that though I took a FG reading. I was aiming for about 1.015 and came out at 1.008! That means instead of the 4.9% ABV I was aiming for, I’ve ended up with something closer to 6.1%! I can only put it down to one of two things (and I’m guessing here), I either got much better efficiency from my mash (aimed for 70%) and had more fermentable sugars than I expected, or the summer warmth in the house got the yeast working like mad.
A freshly bottled citra
Aaaaanyway, I racked it all to another FV with the priming solution in it (100 gm of sugar boiled in a pint of water), then connected the bottling wand to the syphon and got cracking. About an hour – and 43 little yellow caps – later the whole lot was bottled.
All of the beer in crates for storage
I’ll let you know how it tastes in a few weeks. If the sample jar I necked is anything to go by, it’s going to be good.