12 Beers of Christmas 2012!

This is how I pack a 12 oz longneck. It may be overkill, but I'm fully confident that barring *major* trauma to the box, this will prevent any breakage, and probably would prevent leakage even if a bottle broke or bottle bomb occurred:

Materials: 1 bottle of beer (duh), 2 sheets bubble wrap, 2 one gallon ziplocs, scotch tape.

Step 1 - I use two sheets (12 inch square) of small bubble wrap. As mentioned previously this can be purchased at Wally World in a large roll very cheaply. I do roll them from one corner (it facilitates folding the ends later).





Step 2 - Roll up second sheet. I generally have the 'bubble side' of the sheets facing each other, and the flat sides to the bottle and facing outward. This seems to help with slippage, and facilitates taping. I do put a small piece of tape at the corner end of each wrap.



Step 3 - Fold and flatten, then tape down the cap end...



Step 4 - ...and then the bottom end. You will see that wrapping the sheets from the corner allows a nice 'tail' to fold over and fully protect the ends.



Step 5 - Put the wrapped bottle in a gallon size ziploc.



Step 6 - Roll the bottle up in the first bag; as you seal up the ziploc, squeeze out *most but not all* of the air. This allows a little additional cushion.



Step 7 - Repeat with the second bag. Here's the finished bottle, ready to pack in a box...

Thx for that, ill pick up all that stuff, last bit i need to know is the size of the box to hold 3 fully wrapped bottles and the cheapest place to get them.

I'm not sure what size boxes people are planning to use, but for 3 beers, I was thinking of something around a 12 x 12 x 12 box. I'll probably use similar wrapping to what Biochemedic posted, but I have a whole crap ton of packing peanuts left over from a shipment sent to me from Austin Homebrew. I figure I might as well give them a little extra buffer. 12x12x12 should fit three bottles with packing material fairly well, based on my college memories of working in a Mail Boxes Etc.

I still plan on measuring a few of the boxes that were used last year, and I'll post that info up when I can get that done (got too tired last night after mucking around trying to re-size and upload the pictures of the packing procedure). You can use a variety of box sizes, but from my recall, 12x12x12 is pretty close to a good size. I remember thinking that the "optimum" size (ie, able to comfortably fit the three wrapped bottles, without having excessive space to fill with additional material) was a little smaller than that. When I pack I also do put in shredded paper (from shredding old bills/receipts/junk mail), which works just as well as peanuts or crumpled paper/newspaper. There's definitely a variety of ways to do things.

Yeah, shredded paper works very well. I'm using packing peanuts myself because I happen to have a metric ton of them sitting around. At least, that's what SWMBO says. It's a good way for me to us them up.

Ok, here goes...as I recalled, 12x12x12 is bigger than actually needed, the box size needed is deceptively small. Certainly, if you could get 12x12x12 cheaply, you'll just need some additional packing material to fill in the extra space.

10.5 inches seems to be about a minimum for the long axis of the bottle, so one box dimension needs to be at least that length.

I've formatted the listed sizes below as follows:
'Length of box oriented to the long axis of the bottle' x width x height'

Box 1 -- 12 x 7.5 x 5.5



Box 2 -- 12 x 9.5 x 4.5



Box 3 -- 11.5 x 8.75 x 6. As you can see this one is a Priority Mail Flat Rate box...



Box 4 -- 10.5 x 7.25 x 5.5. This box has a real nice tight fit and will need a minimum of extra packing material.



Box 5 -- 10.5 x 12 x 4.5

The Caramel Quad is bottled! (Now comes the long wait for December...)

sweet... i'm brewing the abbey weizen in a month - only 1.062 OG so it shouldn't need much... thinking 30 days bottle conditioning, 30ish days fermenting... i might do a test batch with homegrown hops first in a few weeks - i have some that'll be ready.

looking forward to it bio... sounds yummy!

I'm brewing the Crabapple Lambicky Ale tonight. I'll post up here with how things go!

I racked the juniper rye bock to 2ndary today. It tastes great! It has a very woody flavor to it, like a freshly cut pine tree..or like a freshly cut 2X4. Its not as in your face as I thought it would be considering 8oz of crushed juniper berries were used. The gravity reading is 1.017...I was hoping to get it down to 14 or 15. I'm still going to let it sit at fermentation temp for another month because I'm going to be brewing another lager in the coming days. So once that lager is done I'll kick the temps down for a 10 week slumber at 37. I'll probably take a final gravity reading a month from now.

Just added the dried fruit to the Fruitcake Old Ale a couple days ago. It started to bubble in the airlock again.

I popped a bottle of the Spiced Bourbon Imperial Stout tonight to see how its coming along. It still has a fairly strong star anise taste to it...some if the other spices are there, not too strong though. It doesnt have much carbonation to it, and probably wont given the 13.5% ABV of it. Its very smooth, and will cellar extremely well IMO. Overall I think its coming along very nicely!

Draygon said:

I popped a bottle of the Spiced Bourbon Imperial Stout tonight to see how its coming along. It still has a fairly strong star anise taste to it...some if the other spices are there, not too strong though. It doesnt have much carbonation to it, and probably wont given the 13.5% ABV of it. Its very smooth, and will cellar extremely well IMO. Overall I think its coming along very nicely!

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How long has it been bottled? I wouldn't worry about the carbonation at this point....higher grav brews can take months to carbonate/bottle condition. I'm not expecting any carb on the Caramel Quad (10.5 %)'til at least October... and I added fresh yeast at bottling, long with a relatively high vol CO2 amount of priming sugar...

Just bottled the Christmas gruit. Came out just over %10 abv. The hydrometer sample had hints of cinnamon, juniper, with a nice hop bitterness in the background. Not bad for a green beer.



My 2 l yeast starter





The mash at 150 for 60 minutes





The spices measured out





Ginger beer I drank while brewing this one.

Anyway, hope y'all like it.

Fruitcake old ale update:
Just racked it off the fruit. The fruit had no flavor when I tasted it so its all in the beer. The beer taste kinda fruit sour with cinnamon and clove. I can definitely see why this needs to age.
Fg was 1.020 when I added the fruit, it started bubbling again and the gravity was 1.019 when I racked it off the fruit. So not sure how much more abv there will be, maybe 1-2%?

Dropping a point is probably only a fraction of a percent, but who really cares...by Christmas it will be awesome! I do recall the fruitcake old ale recipe having some tartness, so it sounds like you're dead on....

I'm itching to crack open one of the caramel quads but I'm restraining myself until it's been bottle conditioning for at least a month and a half or so... (It's only been ~3 wks at this point)

What about the sugar in the fruit that fermented out? It had to create a little more abv.

SavoryChef said:

What about the sugar in the fruit that fermented out? It had to create a little more abv.

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Remind us of the fruit you added, please?

.75# each dried raisins, blueberries, apricots and cherries. I went to the gotmead website and inputted the amounts into their calculator and came up with 2%. But without a full mead recipe who knows.

Tasted another one of my Spiced Bourbon Imperial Stouts, still very little carbonation (which may stay this way) the Star Anise is still very prominent in it, hoping that still goes down and mellows a bit more in the next few months.

Have we set a ship date for this yet?

Draygon said:

Tasted another one of my Spiced Bourbon Imperial Stouts, still very little carbonation (which may stay this way) the Star Anise is still very prominent in it, hoping that still goes down and mellows a bit more in the next few months.

Have we set a ship date for this yet?

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Don't worry about the carbonation, it should still develop yet. I know my caramel quad hasn't yet gotten there either, but I'm still not overly worried...I did everything right (I think!). Just put them in a warm place and let it ride. My gruit took a while to carb up last year too...the higher the gravity, the more time it needs...

I think we should target shipping the week after Thanksgiving...I'm pretty sure that's what we did last year, and it gave plenty of time for things to arrive before holiday time...

I wanted to propose that everyone offers reviews for our beers this year. Rhoadsrage reviews were fantastic and likely a little more than most if us can do, but I think we should offer constructive reviews to the best of our abilities. Naturally, this means, hopefully don't drink the beer at 1am as the 10th beer of the night.

If we are getting 11 others to sample our beer, independent feedback could be a great thing.

sfrisby said:

I wanted to propose that everyone offers reviews for our beers this year. Rhoadsrage reviews were fantastic and likely a little more than most if us can do, but I think we should offer constructive reviews to the best of our abilities. Naturally, this means, hopefully don't drink the beer at 1am as the 10th beer of the night.

If we are getting 11 others to sample our beer, independent feedback could be a great thing.

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I agree with that and would love it.

BTW, here's a picture of the Crabapple Lambicky Ale sitting in secondary.

I agree it would be nice to get some feedback from everyone. One thing I suggested as a possible solution last year was to have everyone PM or e-mail tasting notes to each brewer individually, and then each brewer could then post up the notes in a single post (perhaps even with a picture, a la rhodesrage's reviews...)

I figured this would be a less confusing/less fractured way of doing things.

One other possibility would be to have everyone agree that on X day we are going to taste/post reviews on Y beer...I know that at least for me and my crazy schedule that would be much harder.

What do the rest of you think?

December is busy for me, so certain may not work for me.

i have to catch up on all of this, i had some family health issues i had to deal with and haven't brewed in about six weeks... looks like my abbey wiezen is up for this week though! woohoo!

About 2 weeks ago, I moved the juniper rye bock into a 35 degree slumber. There it shall hibernate until the week after thanksgiving. I actually just sneaked a taste and it's very good! Very malty with moderate alcohol and juniper notes. I expect this to mellow slightly over the next 10 weeks. I think it will be a great beer to have in a room with an Xmas tree, roaring fire, and Christmas Vacation on the tv!

I very much like the idea of having assigned beers on assigned nights, but I recognize the logistics for 12 people may not be realistic. We could make a volunteer system and those that are willing and able do just that.

Honey ginger ipa in the works!

Spent hops

Sweet! That's a lot of hops!

my goal was to do my abbey weizen in the last week of september, but it's boiling now... hit all my numbers although it sat in protein rest for longer than i would have wanted (extra 15 minutes - my ex wife stopped by so we argued for a bit, bi***) - anyway, looking good - i didn't follow a recipe, but i'm excited about it; maris otter as the base, german malted wheat and a bit of munich. it's about 60-40 barley/wheat... with my setup i get low efficiency on wheat beers for whatever reason, but i hit 70% (pre-boil anyway) so i'm happy...

it'll be at the upper scale of weizen for gravity (maybe a point over, but i figured the beer will handle it) - single hopped only with 100% saaz, 2.5 oz worth, most of which are at the end so i'm gonna wind up with 15+ BU...

i'm underpitching and fermenting at moderate temps with wyeast abbey II - i actually want high phenolics, esters, etc, so i'm hoping the high temps (65-70) will do right by this. i want to taste the yeast on this one. i'm also going to go in the spirit of christmas beers - low co2, should get plenty of head retention from the yeast and clock in a bit darker than normal weizens with the MO and munich added (maybe 6-8 SRM, i'll have to check)...

as for tasting - there is NO way i can match a schedule that says "taste this on this day" - but i guarantee i will post all results for each beer...

guys - i'm JAZZED for this. been looking forward to todays brew day for a loooong time (it's been two months since i've brewed - sh** just got in the way)...

i have to backtrack on this thread to figure out how we're sharing addys and ship date...

sfrisby said:

I very much like the idea of having assigned beers on assigned nights, but I recognize the logistics for 12 people may not be realistic. We could make a volunteer system and those that are willing and able do just that.

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the only thing i can guarantee is that when things start to land, they'll hit my fridge for a week+ and then from that point on i will only drink the beers we're doing here... i'm excited about feedback. i checked my logs and i've only brewed two wheats out of the last 40 (not counting sours with wheat) - i don't work with wheat often, so i'm a bit nervous.

i am going to lay one of each down for a year and will post the results of that to this thread as well...

by they way, kudos to all of you doing loooooong beers... i usually only make two kinds of beers; ones with short time from brew to bottle and those that take 12-24 months... the long beers are tough...

wow that sound like a great idea, hope all the beers turn out good and what a great way to get a nice eclectic mix of beers

Update: Just cracked one of the Caramel Quads when I realized it's been almost 2 1/2 months since I bottled...I'm very excited at how this is turning out! It's carbonating very nicely, and damn tasty if I do say so myself! And wowza...I can't stop sipping it, but you don't want to drink this one too fast!

Draygon, keep the faith on your monster beer carbonating as well...I kept mine in a warmer area of the house, so perhaps try that with yours as well if it's still not picking up if you sample again...

Checking in! The Saffron Tripel has been in bright tank under low CO2 since the start of July, and I'm looking to chill & carbonate then bottle from my kegerator on the 27th. I'll probably prime and bottle the Brett BGS before that. The Thiriez (3711 French Saison) Tripel has been bottle conditioning about 4 months already and will have 6 months by the time it gets to those who want it

I'm very excited about trying all these beers. It seems to me that the "PM & post" approach to reviewing the beers is most likely to work. While I've been know to drink good beers too late in a night to appreciate them, everyone has put too much effort into this for me not to do my reviews sober. Plus, it'll help me prep for my BJCP tasting exam!

EDIT: I'm looking through all the posts to get a count on the split counts to send out and don't see any from Pint_destroyer. Anyone know if he's still in?

Piratwolf said:

EDIT: I'm looking through all the posts to get a count on the split counts to send out and don't see any from Pint_destroyer. Anyone know if he's still in?

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I would recommend getting a last minute confirm from everyone confirming participation prior to shipping next month. Last year we had one guy who gladly accept our beers while never shipped his own.

Further to "checking in" and such, I only so far have addresses from dgez, SavoryChef, Piratwolf, and Draygon. If the rest of you can get me your addresses by PM, this will at least serve as a "roll call" for now...

sfrisby said:

I would recommend getting a last minute confirm from everyone confirming participation prior to shipping next month. Last year we had one guy who gladly accept our beers while never shipped his own.

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Good call!