It was actually easy once I had everything I needed. We saved bottles as we drank Belgians, and then I bought a case of 12 to round it out. A full 5-gallon carboy fit into about 25 750ml bottles.

After unsuccessfully trying to beg or borrow a corker I caved and picked up a Portuguese Floor Corker at Maine Brewing Supply ($72 later, ouch!). I bought a package of reference corks for Belgian bottles and a bag of twist cages to hold the pressure.

According to ProMash I needed 6.3 oz of priming sugar to get 3.25 volumes of CO2 in the conditioned beer. Because the carboy had sat at cold temperatures (42 deg) for nearly five months I felt like it would be wise to re-pitch fresh yeast, so I rehydrated 2/3 package of Safbrew T-58 and pitched it into the bottling bucket. I had read that T-58 is well known for forming a solid sediment after conditioning is complete – we’ll see how that turns out.

The bottles are currently stored on their side in my living room and the heat is locked at 66 degrees. It usually goes down to 58 in the daytime to save money on oil – oh the things we do for beer!

Tasting notes to follow someday…though I will open one in a couple of weeks, I am hoping this one will be good to put up for a while.

I’m hoping that given some time the flavors will mellow and with cold and carbonation things will even out a bit.

As for the Framboise I dumped half of it (a full case!) before I said, “maybe I should just try one of these, just to be sure.” It was spectacular! Any hint of the cardboard oxidized flavor of the one previously tasted bottle was gone completely – these were great beers. A lucky break – I saved the rest for storage.

The Tripel is still in the fridge cold conditioning. I’ve been waffling between bottling it in Belgian bottles and just kegging the damn thing so I can drink it. I don’t have quite enough bottles, nor corks or corker, so I haven’t done anything yet.

Also there’s a Porter in the future, someday.

Happy new year.

If I can get all the tile installed that I have to do this week I might finally get around to bottling. But it means I’ll have to come to grips with dumping both cases of Framboise that went cardboard on me. I guess I have to finally accept it.

It smells great and tastes good too, all kinds of clove, fruit and not much of an alcohol-heavy flavor at all. Looks like I survived my fermentation temp rise so far.

This one should come in around 9.5% ABV once all is said and done.

First beer on deck, Achel 8 Brune – the Dubbel.

Tasted in an Achel goblet. Chilled the bottle from room temp for maybe 15 minutes in the fridge so it might have been a touch warm, but it seemed about right.

Appearance – Deep reddish-brown in color with big head, both in quantity and size of bubbles. Didn’t lace much at all. Slightly cloudy appearance but mostly clear – probably some yeast knocked loose from the bottom of the bottle. The head subsided quickly.

Aroma – I was surprised to find not much of one. No hop presence I could detect, caramel and nut and a wonderful slightly funky/musty farmhouse kind of yeast smell.

Taste – Warm but without any solventy or alcoholic flavor. Caramel aftertaste married to more bitterness than expected. No hop flavor. Some tarty sour/farmhouse but proportionally not much compared to the aroma.

Mouthfeel – Silk. Absolute silky smoothness assisted by the fizz of high carbonation.

Drinkability/Experience – A strong but smooth beer that represents the style well. Smoother than some other Dubbels out there, Chimay included – possibly due to Achel’s use of Westmalle yeast and a step mash that results in good balance of dextrins.

I’m concerned that the esters will be too powerful, or linger too much, but maybe a lot of it will be reabsorbed as the yeast go dormant. Either way it’s to style from what I’ve read.

I roused the yeast first, then added the cooled syrup I made with 2.5 lbs of boiled table sugar.

Before the sugar was added, the gravity read 1012. That’s incredible for three days even with the large starter, and I think tells me my mash went as poorly as I thought. Although it’s consistent with the lower mash temps yielding a more fermentable wort. Since I forgot to take my original gravity measurement, I can only guess based on the recipe what my starting point was, but according to ProMash it’s 1061.  That’s 80% attenuation – more than Wyeast even specifies for the strain. So I’m naturally suspicious my OG was really in the 1052-1055 range.

Either way this beer seems to be very busy even a scant 15 minutes after the sugar addition – should be cranking tonight.

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The gamble is whether I can find my blowoff hose before things really get roaring.