I always seem to forget exactly how much work goes into bottling beer. Sure I've only done it twice now, but you think I'd have a better grasp on the amount of time it consumes. A few days ago we bottled the barley wine we brewed back in July, it has been downstairs in the secondary fermenter (ie carboy) for quite a while now.

Barley wine is one of those beers that can be cellar-ed, or at least stored for a long time. Mostly in part due to the high alcohol and large amounts of hops in it, so we really let it mellow down in the basement for a while. Which it turns out was a good thing because I had no idea how dirty the liter bottles were. Here's a picture of what they look like, I really wanted to use them because of the "grolsch" style flip cap:

So here's the deal, a friend of mine helped me buy the kit used from a friend of his at work. So in the deal I got a bunch of stuff, and a couple of boxes of bottles. Apparently his first time brewing didn't go so well, hence the reason why he was selling the kit. I'm guessing it went to badly that he didn't even bother to rinse out the bottles after using them. So when I went to clean them, I was greeted by 3+ year old gunk that had almost become part of the bottle on a molecular level :(

I tried soaking them for a few hours, and that basically did nothing. Ended up soaking them in a vinegar solution for 3 days, and even then I was only able to get them clean using a lot of elbow grease, a bottle brush, and purchasing one of these do dads:

I wouldn't normally need one, but I do have to admit they work well. You still need to use a bottle brush on stubborn stuff, but you really can't appreciate it until you've used it. Also made cleaning out the glass carboy easier after we bottled the beer.

Anyways, even after all that I still ran the bottles through the dishwasher to sanitize them with the heat. Christmas eve I knew I had to get this done so the beer could carbonate and maybe even mellow more in the bottle. So that's what we did:

I tried a bit of the beer when we were done (just what was in the tube) and i'm really excited about it. Even flat and warm I think it had some potential.....and speaking of potential.....the hydrometer reading was 15.5 when we brewed....and 3 when we bottled. Using the potential alcohol scale that means the beer has a abv of 12.5%! That's insane.

More to talk about, but this post is long enough. Tomorrow I'll post some pics of Connor from Christmas--although Jen has that base super covered over at his site. Also we'll have some big news here soon....so stay tuned!