Saturday 10 August, 2013 -- A bottling bonanza

A solid day of production for the Trilemma Craft Brewery. Today was the day we really started to feel like we were getting our shit together. We've made a lot of improvements in the way we do things and how we are approaching the jobs.

We've had two 60 litre Fermenting Buckets on the go now for about 3 weeks. One had 3 cubes of 70/- in it and the other had the last 2 cubes of the Oatmeal Stout. Our plan today was to get all of it into bottles and back into the big blue fermenting fridge. It took us about 6 hours, but we got there. 

Back in the 90s, I used to brew some home brew with Monica's Pop. It was mostly nasty stuff, derived from Cooper's Cans, and quite dirty. You'd find a good bottle a lot of the time, but it was Russian Roulette. However, it was free beer. And I didn't know any better. And I was happy to sit there and drink it with him. When he died, he still had hundreds of full bottles in his shed, so I grabbed as many as I could. I thought it would be nice to fill them with the 70/- and I reckon he would have liked that.

But we've run out of bottles now so anyone who can point us in the right direction will get a free beer.

I had to grab Pop's bottles out of the cellar. They all still had beer in them.

Buggered if I was going to clean them by myself. Get working kids, or no TV for a week

There we go! 37 bottles with all the labels removed. 

So, in the brewery now and I'm checking the 70/- for it's 'weight' to see how much sugar we need to add.

Ben has fallen in love with the fridge. Why not? It's running at a steady 19.9 degrees.

The 70/- still in the fermenting bucket. Those cubes on the ground have steriliser in them.

Michael has this nifty app on his phone to tell us exactly how many grams of sugar to add. Maths, eh?

Pop's bottle on the bottle tree. He would have loved this gadget. 

Gimme some sugar! 

Sweet.

Add boiling water (who's having stout to drink at 11am?)

We have to move the 70/- into a nice clean, sterilised bucket for bottling. This is so we don't get a whole lot of sediment in our bottles.

This takes a while, but it is so much quicker now that we have changed over to the 60 litre kegs.

You have to keep your eye on it

And watch for the 'cake' to start to appear

But it didn't take too long

We've added the sugar

And there she is. (Get off it, Michael!)

Good lad!

Time for a beer. 

No Lucy today to make us lunch.

So Ben brought over some 100 day grain fed eye fillet. 

After lunch we started the bottling.

And we didn't stop

Until ...

... we had 43.750 litres of 70/- in the bottles. Hooray!!!!!

So into the priming fridge they go.

And they'll stay there for three weeks

Onto the remaining Oatmeal Stout

We have to clean out and sanitise the keg

Not the most exciting job, eh?

Better have another beer, then.

And into the bottling

Look at all that hard work.

Go you good thing.

Beer goes in

Lid goes on

Bottle is ready

The fridge is looking full

Good work, Ben

Look at all that muck.

No, not on Michael's face. The gunk is the 'cake' left over from the stout.

And there we go. All up, we bottled 130 bottles (we think). Should be ready soon.

Our next day in the brewery will see us make another wort. Mash in, people! Mash in!