Normally I put beer in kegs. They are easy to clean, easy to sanitize, and easy to fill. But every once in a while I have to pull out the Blichmann Beergun to bottle some homebrew to give away. I guess I do this to remember how much I dislike bottling and how much work it is. Cleaning, sanitizing bottles and equipment, filling, purging with CO2, capping, labeling… just too much work. But every once in a while it’s fun to do for gifts and such.
This is the Beergun. It has two inputs, one for beer and one for carbon dioxide. You stick it in a bottle, push the button valve to purge the bottle with CO2, then pull the trigger to start the beer flow. All the parts that touch beer are stainless and the whole thing can be disassembled and sanitized either in boiling water or an autoclave.
This year’s Christmas-time brew was “Wee Devil”, a Scottish Stout inspired from Belhaven Brewery’s Scottish Stout. It is sort of a mix of a Scottish Wee Heavy but with a good portion of dark caramel malts and roasted barley to give it a more roasty flavor. Clocking in at 7.9% ABV, it’s a pretty big beer with a nice malty backbone.
It pours an opaque black with a tan creamy head
Cranked out a label with my mediocre graphic skills, but the prints came out pretty good. The background is of course the flag of Scotland. The strong malty component of the beer is a trademark of Scottish styles due to the Scottish ale yeast strain and long, cool fermentation. Historically, due to circumstance the Scots were long on malt and short on hops which defined their style of ales that are kind of opposite to British ales.
Finished bottles
And 2 hours later, a fleet of bottles read to share with friends.
And that’s enough bottling till next year.
