Bottling Day for the Paso Pioneer Ale

Today was bottling day for the Paso Pioneer Ale, which I brewed on September 4. The wort spent 10 days in the fermentation vessel, with the beer dry hopped four days after fermentation began.

Unlike my Inspired Paso Ale, I actually remembered to add the priming sugar before starting to siphon the fermented beer into the bottling bucket. That’s a pretty important step if you want carbonation.

The bottling process itself isn’t difficult, but like any homebrewing project, it takes some time. Nearly two cases of bottles had to be emptied, have their labels removed, then washed, rinsed and sanitized. Of course, all of the bottling equipment needed the same treatment.

After about 45 minutes of cleaning and sanitizing, I was finally ready to start filling bottles of Paso Pioneer Ale.

The only real change from my original plan was the label.

I initially designed four different versions of the Paso Pioneer Ale label, all inspired by Pioneer Day, held in Paso Robles on October 10. I shared all four designs back on September 2 in Four Labels, One Beer: The Pioneer Paso Ale.

My original plan was to use the Pioneer Parade design, but at the last minute I decided to go in a different direction. I wanted something cleaner and simpler, so the antique tractor became the final label.

From this batch, I ended up with 36 bottles from just over four gallons of beer.

The beer itself didn’t quite hit the numbers I originally planned. During brew day, I didn’t use enough total water. While the original gravity of the 3.25 gallons I boiled was where I wanted it, I failed to calculate the additional water needed to bring the wort to my target gravity of 1.066. Instead, the actual original gravity came in at 1.060.

The good news is that I did hit my target final gravity of 1.012.

That puts the finished beer at approximately 6.3% ABV, down from my original target of 7.1%. For a West Coast IPA, that’s probably a little on the low side, but I wasn’t interested in changing the style of beer simply to make up for the brewing mistake.

Now comes the hard part: waiting.

With any luck, the bottles will be carbonated and ready for their first taste by next Monday or Tuesday. If everything goes according to plan, I’ll pop the top and record the First Sip video.

Until then, I’ll just have to be patient.

Cheers!