So I spent the better part of my day yesterday cleaning, bottling and cleaning all over again. The entire process, not including my breaks took nearly 4 hours to finish but hopefully it will be worth it.

Bottling the Mistake Ale required the use of cheese cloth to catch some undissolved clumps of DME. This worked well and the final product is already showing incredible clarity. The final gravity reading was 1.011 which is higher then the last time I took a reading. This leads me to believe I didn’t take it correctly. The ABV is around 3.5% and each pint is only 150 calories! That is as much as a can of beer would normally have. The sample taste left a lot of be desired; I know I was trying to get a light beer, but I found it somewhat watery and bland. Hopefully next week when I sample a cold one the final product will be better.

The Yeast Experiment was a pain to bottle. To try to keep the results as consistent as possible I moved each gallon fermentor, one at a time into the bottling bucket and then into bottles. After finishing each bottling session I would clean everything with hot water and start the entire process over again.

The final gravities are as follows for each yeast.

S-04 – 1.016 (ABV 3.2%)

S-05 – 1.014 (ABV 3.5%)

S-23 – 1.020 (ABV 2.7%)

S-33 – 1.020 (ABV 2.7%)

To be honest I am not impressed with any of their fermentation’s. I was expect these “premium” yeasts to reach at least 1.010 (around 4% ABV) at a minimum, especially considering that I used 11.5g vs. the 5g I normally do. I was very disappointed in the results of the S-33 “Robust” ale yeast. High attenuation my ass! It fermented out at the same final gravity as the lager yeast, which probably struggled due to the warm fermenting conditions (lager yeasts prefer colder environments for better fermentation). That aside the sample tastes I took from the beers were not as disappointing; For a flat, warm beer they all tasted quite good. I cannot wait until I can try one!