Beer Scientist: Belgian Trappist Dubbel Ale Finish and Bottling

After seven days of secondary fermentation, the trappist stopped releasing air bubbles and so it was ready for bottling. I moved the trappist to the counter top (right side carboy) and started preparing the priming sugar bath (sugar for carbonation) while the sediment settled from the move.

I boiled two cups of water and added in the 4.5 oz. of priming sugar, letting the bath boil for another minute while stirring to make sure that the sugar was fully disolved in the bath.

After boiling the priming sugar bath, I cooled the bath down to 80 degrees F. so that I could add it to the Trappist batch.

Before I added the priming sugar to the batch, I took a final gravity reading of the batch, so that I could calculate the Alcohol By Volume (ABV).

The final gravity turned out to be 1.010, which is very close to the expected 1.016. With an initial gravity of 1.065, the ABV of this batch is (1.065 - 1.010) x 131 = 7.2 % ABV, a fairly high ABV, which is to be expected for a high gravity Trappist. I then poured the priming sugar bath into the bottling bucket and siphoned the batch into the bottling bucket, mixing the priming sugar and the batch together in the process.

Once the batch was fully transferred, I setup the bottling tube, drip pan, and bottles to start bottling.

48 bottles (and two 22 oz. bottles) later, the batch was fully bottled and it was time to cap the bottles.

After just a few minutes of capping, the bottles were all capped. I then put the bottles in cases back into the dark, dry, closet to age and bottle carbonate for three weeks.