After racking over my pumpkin ale this morning I thought I would take the bottled barley wine (brewed back in August and bottled this past week) and wax the bottles (wax was ordered from Northern Brewer-www.northernbrewer.com).
The process was pretty simple, after giving these bottles a few days to start priming and pushing out any residual O2 as the fresh Wyeast 1056 got working (this is just my hang up, not necessary as far as I know) I took a can of Coke, cut it in half and submerged with about 1.4lb wax into an old pot..which by the way is now part of my brewing equipment according to the wife :) filled with approx 1.5 inches of water and boiled until the was melted.
From there I'm sure you can figure out what happened, I dipped and let the wax run down naturally. What you can see in the pic to the right is the standard 22oz bombers which I bottled the bulk of the b.wine in, and next to it is the Champagne bottle used (originally a Dogfish Head Chateau Jiahu) and poured the remaining was over the top to really give it an unique look. This is the bottle that we will age for 5 years..now I've got a reason to look forward to turning 35..kick ass! In the background you can see my loyal brewing assistant kicking it in her crate wondering just why the hell the "male one" is sitting on a floor taking pictures of bottles.
Next up I'll be designing labels for this bad boy with my wife.
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3 comments:
The wax sounds like fun. I'd like to try that on some bottles for holiday gifts.
The barleywine I brewed back in '05 actually turned out really well. (about 6 bottles left) Kinda hot from the alchohol, but, still very good.
I actually forgot the priming sugar when I bottled it. (you have to know me to appreciate that one) It still turned out great after about 6 months of conditioning. Must have been enough residual sugars left over to carbonate.
Anyway...I digress.
That's really cool. My first shot at barley wine was a bust but I like the ide of doing something like that and letting it age a long time. The wax would really make it work.
Great idea.
Cheers.
Thanks for the feedback gentlemen!
Adam-you know I have actually done that exact thing (forgot priming sugar), and had to go back and open up 40 bottles, dump in a coopers tablet and rebottle them...great way to spend an hour or so..
Travis, I didnt see the post going over the busting of your barley wine, going back and looking for that asap. I'm even more excited about making the labels, we've got a long flight to Portland, OR (from Chicago) in a week or so which I'll be working on those.
Cheers!
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