Quad B 4 bottling time

Hi All,

 

I had a very nice morning bottling the remaining 14 gallons of Quad B4. Fired up the Ipod on the garage speaker system and off we went with an 80's audio soundtrack. The smells coming off the beer as i bottled it was truly outrageous! Huge amounts of sweet tropical fruit with a juicy ester backdrop. Glad i've never really been a morning beer person or i would have been sampling!

 

 

 

 I went for 2.1 Carb volume with table sugar so with a bit of luck it'll be nicely fizzy and keep a head for the visual aspect. Speaking of which, hope you like my label?

 

In the end i filled 116 bottles throughout the morning. In addition to this cornucopia of bottlage i also have the Bretted four gallon batch of the same beer which should yield a further 32 bottles.

 

 I will leave this 4 gallon batch in a cupboard until October. I decided to try a laid back approach to the Bretting of the remaining four gallons. I simply flamed the neck of a bottle of Brett'd Ripper IPA decanted the contents and poured the swirled remaining dregs into the four gallon FV.

 

 

I must admit that this is an almost disrespectfully and decidedly casual way of infecting a beer with Brett C and it felt strange to do it. In my defence i can only say that i have a keen interest in seeing just how tenacious Brett C really is. Are we speaking of 'acorns to oak trees' or not with Brett C? Two days after pouring the dregs into the 1.010FG Quad B4 I can say that it is tenacious indeed! There is a permenant ring of Co2 as you can see below.

 

 

Going on past performance i can easily imagine that the Brett'd version will be my favourite. The caveat being that as the alchemy of Brett is not entirely predictable i will just have to wait and see. All going well this time i will make another batch of the same next Summer with the aim to be a final ABV of 4% post Brett.

 

 

Boring cost bit

 

17 kgs grain £20.40

17.5 oz Hops £15.00

Yeasts £ 0.00(fridge stock)

Gas, Caps & Protafloc £5.00

Subtotal £40.40

 

£40.40 / 148 = £ 0.27 per bottle

 

Now then, being in The Wellington Inn and having so many wonderful Belgian beers to try was quite fantastic. The only downside is the price of these imported beauties. The price per bottle of my own Belgian style beer nicely offsets the luxury of drinking Belgian imported beers. It may also go some way to funding my next trip to Hull. I advise anyone in the area to seek out The Wellington Inn and give it a go, get a taxi, don't drive. :) Check out my tribute to various Georgian architectural semi and full town house circles throughout these lands, Cheers!