ESB Bottling

Today, I bottled the ESB. I need to be more careful with syphoning - among other things, I dropped a T-shirt in the bottling bucket!

Anyway, an interesting thin happend during the secondary fermentation. The fermentation activity restarted significantly (about 12 bubbles/sec) for a few days. The only thing I can attribute this to is an increase in temperature.

At bottling, SG was 1013 - a 3 point drop from racking to secondary. This brings the ABV to 5.2%, and AA to 75%. This is right on target for an ESB. The taste has mellowed, definite bitter notes, complex but not overwhelming hop profile. The aroma is fairly modest, which surprises me after the dry hopping. Overall, I'm very pleased with this. It is perfectly drinkable at room temp, and un-carbonated; hopefully it will improve further with bottle-conditioning. I'll find out when we get back from Peru (3 weeks).

Cider Rack to Secondary and Tasting

I racked the cider to secondary. For some reason, the syphon acted up, and I had to restart it 3 or 4 times. I hope there is no infection.

Anyway, this really does taste like cider! Quite dry, pleasant tasting. Not really any aroma, slight apple flavour. SG at racking was 1002, so ABV is 6.5% and AA is 96%. I guess beer generally has much more in the way of complex sugars that the yeast can't metabolise.

I'll leave this until we get back from Peru (5th June)

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Mo and I tasted the hefeweizen and the Belgian wheat. Both turned out really good. The hefeweizen is quite fruity. The Belgian wheat is dry, and very drinkable - maybe a good session beer.