I got the Loco Beer bottled this afternoon. It ended up at a gravity of about 1.008 so the calculated ABV is 4.46% – a little higher than the original but not completely out of the ball park. The initial tastings were encouraging but it is going to need a few weeks in the bottle with the little bit of extra sugar to kick off the final carbonation and conditioning.
It will be interesting to see how it does turn out as I tweaked my bottling regime to make it less onerous. Firstly, I transferred the beer back into the plastic jerry can that I put the wort into to cool down after the initial mash and boil (fully sanitised, of course). I let it dribble out into a plastic jug, through a plastic strainer, and put each jug full into the jerry can, which let me catch most of the trub and murky beer from the bottom. The jerry can has markings on the side so I could estimate the volume and I poured a solution made from a calculated amount of sugar and most of the sample tube back into the cleaned fermenter before returning the beer.
That runs the risk of picking up an infection from air exposure but it also gets more air in to encourage the remaining yeast to get to work on the very small amount of sugar. That may push the actual ABV up a little higher but is mainly in order to create carbon dioxide in the sealed environment of the bottle, which prevents it being flat and may have an additional preservative effect. In addition, it means the bottled beer should be clearer, with less chance of gushing when opened and not so much sediment to stir up if it does.
If it works, I’ll definitely adopt this method going forward as it reduces the pain of bottling day, my least favourite part of the whole process!
