Oktoberfest Bottled!

I'm back! Quite a bit to update. Bottled the Oktoberfest today, after 4 months lagering in the converted freezer of the side-by-side "beer fridge". It was worth it from the small sample I had! Additionally, I used a whole new crop of bottles for this brew, which the process of bottling both more enjoyable and much more efficient. The bottles, seen below, are 1Liter Flip Tops. I have 12 of them which is almost enough to bottle an entire 5 gallon batch using just those bottles. I also used my 2Liter Flip Top.

Using these larger bottles cut down on the time of the entire bottling process, from cleaning and sanitation to the actual bottling. Because there were only 12 bottles to clean and sanitize - in addition to the bottling equipment of course - it took only about 25-30 minutes to clean and sanitize everything for the bottling process. That's an improvement of over an hour - JUST for prepping the equipment! To prime the brew I added 1 and 1/4 cup of Dark Vienna Dry Malt Extract to keep the purity of this famous beer style.

After that I siphoned it all into the (NEW!) bottling bucket and about 15 short minutes later I had all five gallons bottled. No bottle caps, capping equipment, or extensive time hunkered down next to the bottle filler. Compare that to about an hour to an hour and a half to fill 64 12 ounce bottles. Effectively I shaved nearly 2 whole hours off the entire act of bottling the brew, thereby bringing the entire experience back to a wholly enjoyable experience sans tedium. Next up/FINALLY I'm going to make a crisp, clean, Coors Light copycat.
And I've got 4 bottles of Lager Slurry to make another lager of some sort - hopefully no one drinks it before then!

Til next time,
Keep 'em cold!
Jack