Sunday, October 21, 2007

Bottling and labeling of a Barley Wine-Episode I


After racking over my pumpkin ale this morning I thought I would take the bottled barley wine (brewed back in August and bottled this past week) and wax the bottles (wax was ordered from Northern Brewer-www.northernbrewer.com).

The process was pretty simple, after giving these bottles a few days to start priming and pushing out any residual O2 as the fresh Wyeast 1056 got working (this is just my hang up, not necessary as far as I know) I took a can of Coke, cut it in half and submerged with about 1.4lb wax into an old pot..which by the way is now part of my brewing equipment according to the wife :) filled with approx 1.5 inches of water and boiled until the was melted.

From there I'm sure you can figure out what happened, I dipped and let the wax run down naturally. What you can see in the pic to the right is the standard 22oz bombers which I bottled the bulk of the b.wine in, and next to it is the Champagne bottle used (originally a Dogfish Head Chateau Jiahu) and poured the remaining was over the top to really give it an unique look. This is the bottle that we will age for 5 years..now I've got a reason to look forward to turning 35..kick ass! In the background you can see my loyal brewing assistant kicking it in her crate wondering just why the hell the "male one" is sitting on a floor taking pictures of bottles.
Next up I'll be designing labels for this bad boy with my wife.

No comments:

Post a Comment