Batch #1: Kreidler's New Peculiar Update #6: Bottled!

OK, this actually comes a few days late.  Taking advantage of a random Thursday off and a house all to myself, I actually managed to finally get the first batch bottled. It would have to have been on April 1st, wouldn't it?  Now rethinking the New Peculiar name to something to do with that. Whatever...still just gonna be strong Fosters.

So, put on my brand new Avery Brewing Company hat, cranked up the Skankaholics Unanimous, took one last hydrometer reading, (still around 1.011-ish) and began bottling my Cooper's microbrew. All in all, it was a fairly smooth process. Rinsing the bottles for their first use was the most annoyingly time consuming, and screwing on all the stupid plastic bottle-caps gave me a blister on the inside of my thumb that's still pissing me off (24 bottles...imagine if I had done the right amount of water in the fermenter and had to do the final 6 bottles...eesh). The 'little bottler' included with the kit, which attaches to the spigot and only (ha!) allows the beer to flow when the bottom of the bottle pushes up on a simple plunger mechanism, worked fairly well. Certainly better than not having it, but not as good as being able to actually stop without having to turn off the tap each time. Ah well.

Cleaning out the fermenter was fairly painless....just filled the thing up with water for awhile to loosen up the crust from the fermentation foam, which came off fairly easily.  Didn't kill myself *too* bad, since the whole shebang is gonna need to be sterilized for the next batch anyways.  Stored all the extra parts in the fermenter, then packed it back in the box to mitigate anything getting into it (it is kept about 10 feet from 3 actively used litter boxes, so I need to keep my own terrors of contamination at bay here!)

So, the beer should be bottle conditioned in 1-2 weeks time (the 15th, according to the calendar), and drinkable anytime after that. So, I'll let it do it's thing for now, and will most likely be sharing the results at whatever family or friend gathering hits first after that.  We shall see!