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One busy bottling beautiful weekend!

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Chimerix

NewBee
Registered Member
Nov 13, 2006
121
0
0
*Phew*!

What a day! We have bottled, racked, manhandled and slung about 14 gallons of brews today! Cleaned & sanitized 2x 5-gallon carboys, 4x 1-gallon carboys, and about 75x bottles of various description. Not to mention all the support gear, most of which required repeated attention between steps.

First, the Honolulu Hefeweizen was ready to bottle. We sanitized the bottles last night, only had to clear the auto-siphon to get rolling. This was our first experience capping, and we have one of those 2-handed jobbies. Never again. Next trip to the LHBS, we get the Cadillac model table-top capper!

Then, I had my 3 weekend cysers to bottle. Those went into Grolsch bottles, with brand-new gaskets. (Those new gaskets are a BITCH to get on!) Also, my JAO was ready for bottling. Also into the bottles of Grolsch.

Which left me 4 1-gallon carboys to clean. And into them, I racked my Antipodal Mead from Papazians' book. We racked the 1st gallon onto some fresh strawberry guave juice, the 2nd onto fresh starfruit, the 3rd onto fresh strawberries, and the last onto medium toasy French oak cubes from Stavin. The remainder found its way into 3 Grolsch bottles.

Seemed a great way to celebrate my anniversary!

Of course, now I have these 2 empty 5-gallon carboys hanging around... ::)
 

ucflumberjack

NewBee
Registered Member
Sep 4, 2006
839
0
0
37
dont you feel great that you finally got some mead into bottles? i was so proud when i bottled my dangerous cyser(the only one i bottled so far) i made my girlfriend come stare a them with me for a few minutes.
 

wayneb

Lifetime Patron
Lifetime GotMead Patron
CONGRATS! Now don't leave those 5 gal carboys empty too long!! ::)

BTW - for the future, a trick that has worked for me with new Grolsch gaskets is to boil them in water for 5 mins or so before trying to install them. Stretch them and pop them on before they have a chance to cool off much. The hot water softens up the rubber enough to allow them to stretch more easily.
 
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