October Bottling Day: Dry Stout

 The last beer I bottled this weekend was the Dry Stout recipe that I brewed three weeks ago. I had fermented the stout at a constant 60F for the past 21 days, allowing the temperature to rise to the 70F bottling temperature over the last 3 days.Surprisingly enough the stout fermenter showed the least amount of krausen floating at the top of the fermenter, even though it had the largest percentage of grains compared to the Oktoberfest and the Weissbier.

Minimal Krausen Floating On Top Of Dry Stout

 I sanitized the bottles and let them soak for 10 minutes before emptying them and adding my priming sugar. used my Bottle Priming Calculator to help figure out how much priming sugar would be needed to hit the correct Co2 volumes for a Dry Stout beer style. The bottle priming calculator takes into account the temperature of the beer at bottling, the type of priming sugar used and the small amount of Co2 that is already in your fermented beer.

Dry Stout Calls For 1.6 to 2.0 Co2 Volumes Of Carbonation

 The Stout poured out of the fermenter into the bottles with ease, the trub was compacted enough in the Mr. Beer keg that it did not get into any of the bottles when I filled them. Right out of the fermenter the beer went into the bottles with no need to rack to a secondary, cold crash, mix in any gelatin or use any other methods to clarify my beer, so again I'm really happy about that.

Bottom Filling Dry Stout In 1 Liter Bottle

  I poured a sample into a small glass for tasting and the beer came out free of trub or krausen with a small amount of residual Co2 bubbles clinging to the sides of the glass. It's amazing how the hints of chocolate came through without adding chocolate or mocha powder to the recipe, it all came from the grains I used.

 Dry Stout Bottling Sample With Residual Co2

 All of my fermenters are now empty again so it's time to start planning out my next batch of brews. The lager I did came out so good that I'm going to do at least a few more on my next brew day. It's early fall here now so my next brews will have to be hearty enough for winter and I should also include a couple of long fermenters for early spring as well.