After 15 days in the secondary fermenter, my Burning Hills Cacao Stout was ready to bottle. Its gravity was unchanged since the transfer (1.026, from a starting gravity of 1.062), resulting in a final abv of 4.7%. The beer still has a smooth taste and mild chocolate finish (with a hint of vanilla), although the feel of the beer seems to have thinned just a touch since my last sampling. We’ll see how that turns out when carbonated.
I transferred about 4.75 gallons of beer into the bottling bucket and primed the beer with 3.5 oz. (~2/3 cup) of corn sugar boiled in 2 cups of water. The yield was 43 12-oz. bottles and 3 22-oz. bottles.
One minor change with this session is that I attached the bottling wand to the bucket with a much shorter piece of tubing, rather than the 3 foot length I used previously. The result is that it is much easier to bottle, and I’ve eliminated the risk of accidentally getting the bottling wand on the floor.