Well after three weeks of London’s hottest weather in many years, it was definitely time to bottle our Autumn Ale.  I try and see as many things as possible as ‘teachable moments’, and I think that this brew has certainly been one of them. Since October 2011, Andrew, Sam and I have done around 10-15 (feels like more) brews, and we’ve never really had a bad one. There have been rather, ahem, explosive, bottles from time to time, but the actual beer has been drinkable, i.e. not vinegar.

This one, however, was a bit different. Three weeks in my front room, interacting with the sun and some enterprising fruit flies left our ale tasting rather sour out of the fermenter. Still, we went ahead with bottling,  and if it’s more fool us come November, then so be it. Final gravity was 1.015/16, which isn’t all that far off the predicted 1.014, so that’s something we can be happy about at the very least. I think a new fermenter with an airlock will be purchased in the near future to prevent any further fruit fly subsidy.

Here’s some pictorial highlights of the bottling, photos mostly courtesy of Michael Hallet:

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Once the weather has returned to being more typically British (i.e. bloody cold and wet), we’ll be returning to brewing  – this time we’ll be going gluten free.