Bottling Day – Backyard Pilsner – Part Two

Sunday, September 16, 2018

Code name: Strawbeery

After a week in secondary with strawberries, it was time to bottle the remaining four gallons. The strawberries had turned yellowish-gray and the beer was pink.

Because of the problems with the butterfly capper the previous weekend, I designed and built “The Capperatus” from scrap 2×6 blocks that were laying around in the basement. I used a hole saw that was large enough to fit a soup can. A couple of layers of microfiber rags made for a snug fit inside and outside of the can. Also, it couldn’t hurt to have a little cushion.

After a couple of trial runs, the top wood block split, but otherwise the concept worked well.

I scooped out all of the strawberry sludge from the gallon jars and racked into the bottling bucket with the remaining 80% of the priming sugar.

Since the top block of The Capperatus split in testing, I capped the bottles using the bottom half to keep the bottles stable. It did a great job of that. I used the aforementioned “John Henry” rubber mallet technique without incident.