partially filled bottle - OK?

Maybe keep a couple of clean plastic bottles around. You can at least squeeze them to see if they're hardened up before you chill them.

On my very first batch, I'd filled all the available bottles and had like 20 ounces of beer left! So I found an old mason-style jar with a plastic lid and filled it up and stuck some saran wrap over it and screwed on the lid. It didnt carb at all, but I DID feel like grandpa walton sipping on the baldwin sisters' secret recipe. So it was worth it, lol.

Yeah, canning jars are designed to hold a vacuum, not pressure.

I bottled Monday night, and filled all my 12 ozers pretty easily. The next cleaned/sanitized bottles I had on hand were 22 oz bombers, and the last bomber was only about 3/4ths full... so I topped off with Coors Light.

I SWEAR, the CL was left over from a party... brewmeister's honor!

Anyways, I marked it and I'm really curious to see what it tastes like in a couple of weeks. The beer bottled is a brown sugar stout, so adding some BMC lager to it is a bit crazy...

My first instinct was to add some liquor, but SWMBO objected. Apparently ~4oz of liquor in 18 oz of beer offended her sensibilities... and adding water offended *my* sensibilities. I'll post here when I open it, and tell y'all how it turned out.

Justibone said:

... and adding water offended *my* sensibilities.

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yet you went ahead and did it anyways :fro:

Just make sure to let it settle then chill it down to get the sediment nice and tight and it will be just like any bottle conditioned beer but just with a lot of sediment left behind.

JLem said:

yet you went ahead and did it anyways :fro:

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I just *knew* I was gonna catch some flak for that...

throwbookatface said:

I just bottled a batch of blonde ale this weekend. The last bottle was sludgy and 3/4 full. I'll let you guys know how it goes - I may have to filter this one through a coffee filter above the glass, as I couldn't even see through the bottom of the bottle below the label!

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UPDATE: the 3/4 full bottle with tons of sediment came out fine. Strangely, some of the yeast/trub collected right underneath the bottlecap, forming a solid plug that stayed compacted, while more sediment stayed at the bottom. It was a LOT of sediment but I must be getting better at brewing, because it didn't stir up easily and the glass poured really clear. A little low on carbonation (beer was 6 days bottled), but no gushing, and still tasted delicious! Can't wait for the rest to settle in!

I tasted the 22 oz. bottle of brown sugar stout that I filled up the last 4 oz. with Coors Light last night. Couldn't taste the difference at all. The beer was delicious, a little undercarbed and definitely green -- but it's only been in the bottle 1 week and it was a bomber. (I think bombers take a little longer to carb up than smaller bottles, though I haven't tested that yet.)

So a bit of BMC didn't ruin the beer completely.