North Conway New Hampshire

Washing bottles and removing labels the easy way

Got old bottles you want to get clean for your next batch? Here it's a sure fire way and ready way to clean bottles of all the dirt that had accumulated in the bottom of them.
Grab one of your pails and fill with water and add one scoop of oxyclean, mix well, and submerge all your dirty beer bottles.
I leave mine in overnight and when i take them out they are sparkly clean.

Makes for a great way to take those labels off the bottles as well. When you pull out your bottles you'll find the labels sitting in the bottom of the bucket.

Be careful the bottles will be slippery when you  remove them. Rinse the bottles very well with clean water and if you have a bottle washer attachment i find that works really well for rinsing out the inside of the bottles.

Remember always use a desanitizer before bottLing your beer.

Jalapeno Cream Ale - Step 3.

After waiting 5 or so days in the Primary Fermenting Pail, it was time to divide the batch into two smaller batches. Just in case I screw up the Jalapeno batch I will still have half a batch of regular Cream Ale to drink away my sorrows.

I bought 2, 10 litre water jugs from the grocery store to use as smaller Second Fermentation vessels.
Tried to drink all the water but it was too much, actually used 10 litres of it to mix with my StarSan for sanitizing my equipment and jugs.

After siphoning the beer into the 2 smaller vessels I tested the whisky that I had been soaking the jalapenos in .... not as hot as I thought.
Before adding the whisky tincture to the beer I had to taste the beer to get a baseline. (Have to say I much prefer cold, carbonated beer!)

First, I added about 1/4 oz of the tincture and re-tasted. i didnt notice much of a difference.
I then thought that possibly the flavor might intensify during another week fermenting, but really had no idea.

So logically I added more :-)

I ended up adding 3/4 oz of the whisky tincture to 10 litres of beer, popped on the airlocks and now we'll wait another week to bottle it.

I'll keep you updated.

Jalapeno Whisky Cream Ale - Step 2

Roasted jalapeños soaking in canadian whisky. It will make a nice tincture to add to the secondary fermentation cycle. It should hopefully make it easier to control the flavor and the heat.

Jalepeno Whisky Cream Ale - Step 1

Roasting my homegrown jalepenos on my charcoal bbq. Hoping to get a nice smokey warm flavor