Bottling Day: Vanilla Porter

1 week after adding in the vanilla beans to our vanilla porter, it was time to bottle. I was pleased that the beans did not introduce any harmful microorganisms to our brew. The first wiff I took from the fermenter was sulfury, but it dissipated quickly to give strong chocolate and vanilla scents. This is one of the better smelling beers we have made and are proud of it.

Yay the beer made it

We used up the last of our long neck bottles for this one. I was tempted to use some sparkling wine bottles I had lying around, but it didn't happen. Delabeling didn't take too long since a lot of the bottles were cleaned from the last time we bottled.

Most of these were already delabeled; saved me time.

 Once we had confirmed no infection got into the fermenter, we siphoned the brew to the bottling bucket (with priming sugar added). The beer had clarified nicely.

Clear as brown can be

This time around I was capping the bottles; I let my housemate fill. He spilled a lot less beer than I usually do, so that amounted to around a whole bottle worth of beer. Filling went without any issues otherwise.

Bottle caps ready to go

Total yield from this batch was 43 12 oz bottles. Not as many as I thought we would get, but still a good yield. With the three way split, that's 14 per person plus an extra for tasting.

43 bottles -- 14 each + 1 extra

I'll give another update (and a photo) once carbonation is complete. Until March, cheers!

Look at that head!