We could not put off bottling our saison any longer.  It has been fermenting in the carboys for 4 weeks now.  At this point, we are risking the inactive yeast cultures and hops, which have settled at the bottom of the carboys, imparting unattractive flavors into our beer (oh, no!!).   Never mind the fact that the season’s first nor’easter was blowing through, we had to buy more bottles today!!

After bundling up, we set out on the D train to Brooklyn.   Here we go!….

Once arriving at Brooklyn Homebrew, I spent a bit of time ‘getting to know’ the various barleys and malts available.  We plan on immediately brewing another batch after bottling the saison, and we have decided to try a porter.

In the above picture, I am getting a good whiff of the chocolate malt…yuuuummmmy (geez…if I’m not baking with chocolate, I’m drinking chocolate.  Will the madness ever stop?).  We decided that it definitely had to be part of our recipe.

We left with ingredients for two 2.5 gallon batches.  We are again experimenting with different yeasts in each batch and have decided to try dry hops in one batch.  We also broke down and purchased a bottle washing attachment for our sink.  This will make cleaning bottles so much easier.  We also picked up the bottles for our saison…..that’s priority number one.

The weather had picked up of course…just in time for our trek back home.  But, we had purchased trash bags to wrap around our boxes of bottles, so no worries!

Then, we headed to the platform.  It was Saturday, so we weren’t the only people braving the weather to do a little shopping.  Boxes or no boxes, backpacks or no, we squeezed our way onto the train.

We transfered to the 1 train at the Times Square stop and headed back home to the upper west side.  Ah….the upper west.  There are actually areas of Manhattan that are not as busy and where walking side by side is an option.

We made it!…no slipping or spilling or breaking!  But we haven’t started bottling yet…  : )

Stayed tuned for bottling updates.  Cheers!