Bottle Day

Yesterday was bottling day for the vanilla bourbon stout that I had been brewing.  It was supposed to set in the secondary fermentor for four weeks, but it got five because we got busy with Christmas.  I always forget what a process bottling is.  Cleaning the kitchen, washing the bottles, boiling the corn sugar to add to the brew to produce carbon dioxide, steaming the bottle caps, decanting from the secondary fermentor into the bottling bucket, and then the tedious task of filling 12 oz in each of at least 48 bottles (in this case 49).  Then it all ends were it begins with cleaning the equipment and then re-cleaning the kitchen.  All in all, the brew seems like it is going to be quite good once it bottle conditions.

I would be remiss without a shout-out to my co-bottler.  She is the capper and counter.

I have a hard cider that is done also, but I need to clean the labels off of some old beer bottles.  Right now I am about a case short of bottles for that bottling operation.