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.

We went up to Cascade last weekend to cut a Christmas tree (as is tradition).

Farley likes to wedge her snout between Annalise’s seat and the front seat.

There was just barely enough snow/ice on the street for sledding. We made many, many trips up the street sledding with the girls. Annalise and Ava both liked sledding, and Ava really loves holding her little sis on the way back up for another run.

Jenn and Ava sledding in the side yard “bunny hill”

For some reason this is hilarious to me. Annalise is trying to put her pajamas on, then gets distracted after finding something on the floor.

Annalise and me watching Ava playing in the snow out front

The joys of getting children ready to go out in the cold…

And finally, our humble Christmas tree. We’ve grown to prefer the skimpy native trees that can barely handle the weight of lights and a few light ornaments. Ava and Annalise are busy every day making some new ornaments to hang up.