When I do my bottling, using my current technique, I am still typically left with a bottle that doesn’t quite get filled up and which gets a certain amount of sediment in the bottom. I try to make sure that I put an extra mark on that one to make it stand out and, aware that bottles with more sediment seem to have a higher chance of going off, I normally use it as a sample not too far into the conditioning process.

I did that with the marked bottle of Brown Dog Stout tonight. It was reasonably well carbonated and poured pretty clear. That can be tricky with a dark beer but I made sure to do it under good light so I could stop before the sediment got poured out. I also used another trick I’ve tended to adopt recently – pouring into a measuring jug first so that I can do a second pour into the glass thinking more about speed and angle to promote head formation and not having to worry about the sediment.

The taste was promising although there is certainly room for it to improve. The beer is very dark, full-bodied and reasonably sweet. The next step will be to make some labels for the rest of the batch and then to leave it bottle conditioning until at least the end of March. Meanwhile it is about time I got my next batch underway.