Can you truly bottle the soul of Apokolips?

Bottling Day!

Today, I had an unexpected day off, so took the time to bottle.

First, I brought out the sanitizer, and started the laborious process of washing and sanitizing my bottles.  I save a lot the bottles from beer that I buy for just this occasion: glass bottles can be sanitized and re-used hundreds of times!  But one of the tough parts is getting the old brewer's labels off!  So, a half hour soaking in warm, sudsy water, plus some time with a scraper, and they're generally clean.

  While they dried, I prepped the sanitizer, started sanitizing all of my tools, and drew one last sample from the fermenter.  The biscuit malt flavor is a little stronger, as are the hops (I dry-hopped with 1oz Sorachi Ace 5 days ago, bringing in a bit more citrus/lemon profile, which is now showing!)  I can tell the alcohol is higher.  My final gravity reading was 1.010 (Original Gravity was 1.058), which means my ABV at the time of bottling is approximately 6.3%.  For reference, your redneck cousin's Natty Lite clocks in around 4.2%, meaning Darkseid packs 50% more alcohol.  Most full-flavor mass market beers out there are around 5%, 26% weaker than this baby.  In fact, the Lord of Apokolips is equivalent to nearly 2.5 Michelob Ultras!  While no Barleywine, DARKSEID can take down most of your average superheroes easy.

The Blue Boy will still drink this stuff like water...

  Great!  Next step: add priming sugar.  I have a couple main options: The standard method is to add all of the priming sugar I need for 2 gallons (something like 1/2c) into a bottling bucket (any bucket at least as big as my fermenter, with a spigot in it), rack the beer from the fermenter to the bucket, and give it a whirl to mix the sugar up.  Then, just fill the sanitized bottles.  But no, I am not that efficient; I am more hardcore!  So naturally, I grabbed a sanitized funnel, and literally poured 1tsp of priming sugar into each bottle.
  After that, it gets filled with beer, and then capped.  Give it a good swirl to ensure the priming sugar is well distributed around the bottle (gives a boost to carbonation), and we're all set!


  I will be priming (carbonating) and conditioning these bottles for at least 2 weeks.  Most likely, it'll turn into a month, but either way, I should be back here in 2-3 weeks with tasting notes!

Whatchyoo gonna do with all that gunk inside that trunk?

Finally, the cleanup.  The fermenter had a lot more trub than I expected, but that's fine; it's full of nitrogen, and so are the hops!  So, into the compost you go!  Maybe we'll actually grow grass next year.

Hops bag, after 5 days of dry-hopping.  Not so dry anymore.

Anyway, things are looking good for this beer.  If it works out, I'll probably make a stronger version of it, and call it Darkseid v2.0.  The great nemesis of DC Comics deserves a killer stout or barleywine.

Oh, and one more thing... I made cold brew coffee yesterday, and then spent all evening reading about using cold brew in beer.  So, I added about 3oz concentrated cold brew to two of my bottles.  I'll let these condition at least a month, maybe two before I try them; we'll see what happens!

DARKSEID... plus COFFEE!
Is this truly the end of the world?
Probably not... but there's only one way to tell!