Beer Blog: Bottling Day: German Hefeweizen (Blueberry Banana)

After brewing, and dry hopping Blueberry Banana German Hefeweizen, it's finally time to bottle! If you recall, I have an upcoming club meeting where everyone is brewing a beer with cereal in it, and I ended up with Blueberry Muffin Top cereal. I got the idea for a German Hefeweizen because the German Hef naturally comes with a slight banana flavor to it. Now, let's get down to bottling.

First, I move the carboy into the garage. I let it sit for a while to settle out the yeast that got kicked up during the move.

While the carboy is settling, I start the cleaning. Five gallons of water, Starsan, and all the equipment that I'll need.

A quick snap of the recipe while things are cleaning.

It's time to get the corn sugar ready. I set the boiler on low to slowly melt the sugar into the water, which will create a nice simple syrup. When added to the beer, and bottled, the left-over yeast will consume the sugar, and create CO2 in the bottle. This is called bottle priming (as opposed to using a CO2 canister).

Before I move the beer from the carboy to the bottling bucket, I take a quick dip to see where our final gravity settled at. It appears to have stopped at 1.020. This is a bit high.

When I added the six ounces of the cereal to the carboy during the dry hop last week, it appeared to totally kill the yeast. I got nervous, and took a sample last week, and it came out to 1.020 as well, so over the course of a week, the yeast has not done anything. Bummer.

1.020 is still drinkable (especially with a sweet beer, and a starting gravity of 1.062), but it could have been lower. Next time, I would wait to dry hop until fermentation has completed.

Time to bring the bottling bucket into the garage and fill it with beer.

Yikes. While attaching the siphon, I discover that I actually can't get the dry hopped cereal out of the bucket because the opening is too small. I decide to punt on that problem until later, and just leave it draped over the side for now.

I've started the siphon. While watching the beer go down, I notice some very strange purple/blue bubbles on the side of the bucket. It looks almost like vinegar suspended inside olive oil. The only thing that I can think of is that the cereal has some really funky food coloring?

Here we are, filling the bucket up. The corn sugar has already been slowly stirred in at this point.

Time to get the bottles ready. I'm actually out of bottles at this point, so I went and picked up twenty four more at More Beer.

I've put the bottling bucket on the table out side because it's such a nice day. I cover the top in Saran wrap to keep bacteria, dust, and twigs from getting into the beer.

Time to sanitize some bottles.

The first beer has been bottled!

Half way done.

Another snap of the progress. Benny's butt, too.

Benny's having a Lazy Sunday.

And we're done!

Everything in its right place.

Now, how do I get the dry hop bag out? Pulling just starts to rip the bag. I decide to open the bag, and fill the carboy with water. The turbulence from filling the carboy causes the cereal to float out of the bag.