My Winter Sale brew is now bottled. It started at 1.042 @ 21°C and ended up at 1.012 @ 16.3°C. Using Google convert the temperatures to Fahrenheit (70°F and 61°F) and then Dave’s Dreaded Homebrew Calculator suggest that the ABV is 4.0% (and, with a little further conversion, should have about 216 calories per 500ml bottle). I estimated that I had about 8 litres of beer according to the figures on the side of my brewing vat and, with some figures from Andy Hamilton’s Brewing Britain, primed with 70g of sugar (fortunately a slight overestimate, as I got 19 bottles, suggesting much nearer 10l).

Bottling with a siphon is a slow process, so I tried a different technique. First I gently poured from the fermenting vessels, two 5l water bottles, to a plastic brewing vat. The ridges on the bottles help slow down the escape of the spent trub from the bottom. Then, after mixing in the priming sugar, I used a jug and funnel to gently fill the bottles.

Now to wait for a couple of months and see what the results are like!