Although I got my grains mixed, my Wheat Lightning brew seemed to ferment okay and I got up early this morning to bottle it. Final gravity was about 1.009, suggesting a nominal ABV of 5.38% – quite a strong brew. I got 11 500ml bottles and a little leftover, which went to top up the “slug pubs” in my polytunnel.

Apart from having a lot more pale wheat malt than originally planned, the other tweak was that I decided to put the carbonation sugar into the bottles rather than mixing it into the whole batch. My carbonation results often seem variable from bottle to bottle and I wonder if my sugar solution doesn’t get thoroughly distributed? This time I was estimating that I’d get 12 bottles, so I mixed up 30g of sugar to 120g total weight by adding water (and the beer from the gravity sample jar), gently heating and swirling to encourage it to dissolve. I then added 10ml of the liquid to each bottle using a syringe. I’ll find out in a few weeks how that has turned out.