brewing 2ne1

Nettle Ale is Bottled

Bottled the Nettle Ale. It has a light fizz to it and the SG has dropped to 0.996, indicating a ABV ~6.4%. It was still a bit cloudy but not milky, sort of like a Hoegaarden beer. A good nettle flavour and with a sour-zesty lemon dimension. I added a half teaspoon of sugar to each bottle but they have not been put somewhere warm and, with the weather like it currently is, this might not be  possible. We’ll see how they develop…

Note to self: Sterilising, rinsing, sugaring, bottling, crowning and wiping down 40 bottles takes longer than I plan for. Especially if some still have labels that need removing (although Elgood’s Black Dog labels come off a treat if you soak them).

P.S. Just read some notes at Suite101 How To Bottle Your Homebrew. In particular it seems I have not used the ideal sugar:

The type of sugar typically used to prime homebrew is dextrose, or corn sugar, but you may also choose to use dried malt extract (DME). The proper dosage for a 5-gallon batch of beer is ¾ cup of dextrose or 1-1/4 cup of DME. Do not use white table sugar (sucrose) as it will leave a tart “apple-y” flavor in your beer.

And if you’re not doing if from a pressure barrel you can ‘bulk prime’ to save time:

In particular Bulk priming is much easier and much more accurate. Simply dissolve the sugar of your choice in about a cup of water and bring to a boil in a saucepan. When this has cooled, pour it gently into your beer while it is in the bottling bucket. Gently stir it in with a sanitized utensil (racking cane, bottling tube, etc.).

Dylski