That being said, I chose to bottle both my Imperial Stout and the Belgian Dubbel early. The stout was given almost 2 months to secondary and the Dubbel was given about 3 weeks to clear in secondary. They’ll now age in the bottle and I might as well have them carb up at the same time.

Also, I need some equipment free to start my next brew, a Belgian Patersbier. I bottled both of the above using both plastic and glass bottles for a variety of sizes.

This was also the first time I’ve used yeast at bottling, which should be done anytime I secondary a beer from here on out. I used a couple dry yeasts for both. For the Dubbel I used a whole pack of T-58 along with 2/3 cup corn sugar, which was probably double of the yeast I should have used. The result will simply be more matter at the bottom of the bottle, so I’ll pour carefully. It shouldn’t effect the beer. For the Imperial Stout, I used about 3/4 cup of corn sugar with a half a packet of US-05. I was talking to a guy at the LHBS and he mentioned trying to use 5 oz of corn sugar and 2 oz of normal table cane sugar because traditionally they are both eaten by the yeast differently and for some reason it is a good method for bottling.

“When you are racking your beer from the primary fermentor to the secondary, is the time that you should be collecting the yeast. It’s easy to do it. Just sanitize a quart jar and lid, sanitize the neck of the primary fermentor, and pour from the fermentor into the jar. [Some people wipe the fermentor lid with alcohol and flame it to sanitize.] Loosely cap the jar so that if you have some continued fermentation, the glass jar will not explode! Clean out the primary fermentor and pour the quart of yeast solution back in. You can then pour a fresh batch of wort directly into the fermentor. This is the easiest method of reusing yeast.

If your next batch of wort won’t be ready for up to a week, you can store the glass jar of yeast in your refrigerator and reuse as is.”