Bottled Biere de Table and Biere de Garde

Filling the Biere de Garde

After a month and a half of fermentation and conditioning for the Biere de Table and a month of fermentation and conditioning for the Biere de Garde, both beers have been bottled. For the Biere de Table, I bottled in bomber bottles with 4 oz. of cane sugar. This should produce roughly 3.0 volumes of CO2, a bit more than I typically carbonate my beers to. Since it's a Belgian Ale, I'm thinking the additional carbonation should work well with the style.

The Biere de Garde should be even more carbonated as I added 7 oz. of corn sugar, which should result in about 4 volumes of CO2. I chose to bottle for the first time using Belgian 750 mL bottles using a cork and cage to seal the bottle. The heavier glass and cork should resist the force of the carbonation and allow for this beer to be heavily carbonated. It's a fairly strong beer at about 7.7% ABV with a final gravity of 1.010, and the additional carbonation should help to thin out the perception of the final beer, leaving it light and aromatic. The beer that was left un-bottled tasted great. A nice balance from the rye malt, the oats, and the cascade hops really comes through. It should be a great beer for summer.

A bottle of Biere de Garde being filled

The Belgian IPA was also transferred into a keg to cold crash the yeast after two weeks of fermentation. Fermentation ran very warm; it started at 68 F, ramped up to 80 F, then up to 85 F and even 90 and 95 F at one point. These high fermentation temps helped to impart some strong estery and phenolic flavors that I think will play well off of the citrusy and spicy Centennial hops. Once most of the yeast has been cold crashed to the bottom of the keg, I'll filter out the yeast and transfer the beer into another keg and onto the 2 oz. of Centennial for dry hopping.

The Biere de Table in the background (capped)
and the Biere de Garde in the foreground (corked and caged)