Bottled my Fat Tire Clone

Last night I bottled my Fat Tire clone! It had been sitting in my primary for a little over 3 weeks now and I was to be able to drink it in 2 weeks, so last night was the night! I wanted to try something a little different though.....typically, after I rack my beer into my bottling bucket, I just wash out all the leftover yeast and trub. I used Nottingham yeast to do the fermenting of the FTC (getting sick of writing out FAT TIRE CLONE) and I have heard that Nottingham is a really good yeast to use and a lot of people use it as their "go to" yeast. So I will have a little writeup at the end about my first experience with yeast washing.

I got all my equipment ready, started boiling my priming sugar, and mixed up 2.5 gallons of one-step to sanitize 2 TAD bottles and 16-20 10 ounce bottles. I have decided that with every batch I do I am not going to TAD it ALL, only because I like to give some people a bottle or two where dragging a 1.5 gallon TAD bottle is just a little much!

Everything is ready to go!

I'm just giddy to pop the lid off my primary because I really want this beer to turn out. It is the first beer I have let sit in the primary for 3 weeks so I had no idea what I would find. I got it opened up and the smell was pretty good and the beer looked pretty clean (not a bunch of stuff floating around). I grabbed my sanitized hydrometer and placed it in the bucket. 1.011 was my reading which was exactly what the FG was suppose to be!

I racked it into my bottling bucket, adding the priming sugar about halfway through. The beer was looking pretty clear at this point so it looks like leaving it in the primary for 3 weeks really help to clean it up. I then attached the bottling wand and filled the TAD bottles first. I like to fill the TAD's first because it takes the longest so with the bottling bucket full, it comes out a little quicker. But man, do those TAD bottles get heavy when holding them for a while waiting for it to fill!

Filled the 2 tad bottles and moved to the 12 ouncers.

All in all I got 2 TAD bottles and 18 12 ounce bottles. I had about 5 ounces left that i put in a bottle, but that was for sampling! It was good, pretty flat, but good. You can tell it is still young, but I think 2+ weeks in the bottles and it should be perfect!

Now to clean up my mess!

I mentioned that I was going to wash the used uesd to make this beer. I forgot to take picture of this process so I will make it short and sweet. If your interested in the process though, you can literally find 100 threads on forums that explain it step by step. But I before I started bottling I boiled some water, let it cool, then poured it onto the yeast cake after I raked off the beer. I then swirled it around a bit and covered it with the lid while I bottled. After bottling, I poured the yeast/water mix, minus the bottom trub, into a large, plastic Arnold Palmer drink container. I didn't have a large jar, but I did sanitize it first! I then let that sit for about an hour to separate out.again. I only had 2 mason jar so I sanitized those and poured the washed yeast into them, then put them in the fridge.

I don't know if I'll use these again when I brew beer, but I have an idea, an experiment if you will, to use these yeast on. I hope to try it on Saturday or Sunday.....I'll keep you posted!

Lastly, I need to give a shout of thanks to my amazing wife for taking Eva so I could bottle, while at the same time was making us diner!