Brooklyn (RIS) Stout (1st Tasting update 04/04/10))

[leedsbrew]

racked this to secondary tonight. Going to get a corni sanitised this weekend and bob it into that, the it's off to the corner of the garage for the 6 months. After that I'm going to bottle from the corni and crack the first one open on new years eve 2010!

[mysterio]

So... did you sneak a taste ?

[leedsbrew]

Hell yeah! It got down to it's expected FG of 1.023 so it's 8% ABV. It has a definite rawness to it still and a warming, alcohol heat, which is nice. It has a very nice, smooth coating mouth feel. Really dark, roast malt flavours, followed by a bitter chocolate/roast coffee flavour. A good hit of bitterness from the golding, then a melding of the flavour hops. It is going to take a whole lot of will power not to drink this. I've got a couple of small, french larger style bottles I might have to fill and date for tasters every other month! The rest will be going into 330ml bottles behind lock and key!

[DarloDave]

I had a bottle of this for the first time last week. Was a nice beer, but I dont have the willpower to brew something like that!

[leedsbrew]

carbonation is getting along nicely on this one. Had a bottle of Guiness foreign export (7.4%) last night. Nice beer but I reckon my RIS is better. Too much roasted barley flavour in the Guiness. Will be sorting out 330ml bottles from the garage this week and hopefully get this bottled on my long weekend next week

[WishboneBrewery]

Did you collect all your own 330mls? which bottles did you collect or is it a random load?

I need a bottling session soon, need to give my bottles a good bleach as they've just had star-san for a fair few brews.

[leedsbrew]

Well this finally got bottled yesterday.


Bottled from the corni through 6 feet of 3/16. The keg had been in the garage all week to get cold.

It seemed to have worked well as there was little foaming



37 bottles, including 4 250mls dated for April, July, Oct, and Dec for some sampling!


The last of the keg



Now it's tme to squirel this away in the backof the garage to mature till Jan 2011!

[adm]

Nice work there......looks great.

Couple of questions on the bottling from corny:

The beer line is in the bottling bucket - is that just to keep it out of the way or is there an ulterior motive?
I don't see any tap or method to stop the beer coming out. Were you just using a continuous flow and removing the disconnect whenever you wanted to stop the flow?

[WishboneBrewery]

do you just gas it to serving pressure and skip between bottles while filling?
good luck with the maturation!!

*edit, yeah... and what he said!! ^^

[DarloDave]

Looking good

[leedsbrew]

Nice work there......looks great.

Couple of questions on the bottling from corny:

The beer line is in the bottling bucket - is that just to keep it out of the way or is there an ulterior motive?
I don't see any tap or method to stop the beer coming out. Were you just using a continuous flow and removing the disconnect whenever you wanted to stop the flow?

Cheers adm. To answer your questions

1 - The beer line is in the bucket mostly to keep it out of the way as it wouldn't stay wound up and I couldn't find the sellotape, but the starsan solution in the bucket was made up with water from the cold tap. The temperature of the cold tap was very very cold so I reckoned that it would help to reduce foaming by a last quick chill through the 3/16 in very cold water.

2 - You are correct, I've only got a dalex tap for dispensing beer so that was no good. I just used continuous flow and moved the line from bottle to bottle in one go, didn't need to disconnect once. At the end of the bottling session I only had about 1/4 pint of spillage in the bottom of the washing up bowl!

[leedsbrew]

do you just gas it to serving pressure and skip between bottles while filling?

I degassed the corni via the pressure reliefe valve, then turned the gas reg back to 0. After putting the end of the beer line in a glass I turned the reg up to about 5psi to flush the starsan from the 3/16 line and get the beer flowing. Then it was just a matter of skipping from one bottle to the next. I managed to get the flow rate up to about 15psi without any excess foaming. I think the only reason I got it so high was becouse this is an RIS, so carbonation is quite low anyway. I bottled some of my Swaledale ale that was carb'd to about 1.8 vols co2 and got that to about the same. I don't think an APA or a lager would get much past 10psi to bottle this way. It was still quite quick though. got all 37 done in under 45 mins

good luck with the maturation!!

Ta, I don't think I'd be able to do it wihtout the little 250ml testers every so often! It is such a nice beer. It's not even 2 months old and I could crack into it already! LOL

[jonnyhop]

That looks like some fine ale! Very impressed with the discipline to mature it until 2011. Everything I aim to mature succumbs to the “just one more” problem.

I degassed the corni via the pressure reliefe valve, then turned the gas reg back to 0. After putting the end of the beer line in a glass I turned the reg up to about 5psi to flush the starsan from the 3/16 line and get the beer flowing. Then it was just a matter of skipping from one bottle to the next. I managed to get the flow rate up to about 15psi without any excess foaming. I think the only reason I got it so high was becouse this is an RIS, so carbonation is quite low anyway. I bottled some of my Swaledale ale that was carb'd to about 1.8 vols co2 and got that to about the same. I don't think an APA or a lager would get much past 10psi to bottle this way. It was still quite quick though. got all 37 done in under 45 mins

So would it be possible to replicate this with a Widget World system? Essentially doing what pdtnc asked and

just gas it to serving pressure and skip between bottles while filling?

I realise this is different from using the blichmann beer gun to add beer then add pressure but if you could get pressurised beer in cold bottles without losing to much from spillage you would be saving a lot of cash on equipment. Or has your method worked because of the continuous 5psi pressure coming through?

[leedsbrew]

LOL, I haven't managed it yet! I did manage to get the psi up to 15 without it going crazy. I've never used widget world but I recon the principles are the same. Use alot of 3/16 to reduce the line presure and bob's your aunties live in lover! degassing the corni to 0psi in the begining means that I could introduce presure to the keg gradually and get a steady flow of beer 1st without sending it flying out of the line at 20psi and getting a load of foam. I have found it easier to keep the foaming t a minimum first rather than get ti foaming and try to get rid of it (if that makes any sence!), prevention is better than the cure kinda thinking!

I'm going to be bottling my dark lager soon and that's gassed at 2.5vols/L so I'll post the results on higher carbed beer using this setup!

[jonnyhop]

LOL, I haven't managed it yet!

No worries, it was just an idea that sparked my imagination.

Use alot of 3/16 to reduce the line presure

What's that then?

I'm going to be bottling my dark lager soon and that's gassed at 2.5vols/L so I'll post the results on higher carbed beer using this setup!

Excellent, will look forward to it! I have a couple of brews in corny's which are maturing, I will give it a try myself and see if I can glean anything. If (a stupendously big if) I can work a camera and upload photos I will share my mishaps/wisdom. I suspect having the bottles cold will help reduce fizz, though this could be a problem bottling on mass. I suppose the point is that if I bottle a brew I can hide it somewhere and let it mature, where as anything in the corny gets drunk as soon as their is a hint that its ready. And their is the obvious benefit of ageing beer in the corny for a few months before bottling.