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Friday 14 March 2014

I don't want to be cocky...

...but it is exactly what I was wanting...

So despite the fact it has only been in the bottle less than a week, I chucked a stubbie in in the fridge and tried the still unnamed Rhubarb Wit, and it is great. A slightly sour beer without the months/years of aging and introduction of weird wild yeasts (Brettanomyces‎) or bacterias (Lactobacillus).

Of course I might have screwed up the sanitization process and introduced the funk it which case I have accidental genius...

Either way it is a result!

Monday 10 March 2014

It's bottling time again....

Opps, have neglected the blog a little...

So after two weeks in the fermentor I crash cooled for a couple of days and racked off the beer from the yeast cake and mess of rhubarb at the bottom of the barrel - and proceeded to make a new mess in the secondary fermentor by adding the remaining rhubarb pulp.


The beer got another week in the secondary with the pulp and another few days of crash cooling before bottling.

Bottle cleaning was made easier by the addition of a Vinator Bottle Washer (which I now wish I had ordered online rather than being gouged buying locally!). All the bottles were recycled, mostly 750ml plastic bottles from Catrina and a pile of plastic Tui bottles (don't ask about the Tui, lets just say that this is the only beer available if you go and watch Cricket in Wellington) along with a handful of glass bottles.

The glass bottles are slightly interesting. The 4 x 650ml bottles got 2 teaspoons of Strawberry Liquor added at priming, while the 5 x 500ml bottles got dosed with half a teaspoon of Pomegranate Molasses (in addition to the priming sugar).

Sorry, totally forgot to take any photos while bottling - never quite enough hands.

This looks like the most economical brew so far, despite the increase to the equipment costs. I really might have to start taking out my time as it makes the beer look really expensive!