Hoppy Belgian #1

Made a starter using wort diluted down to approx 1.040 with weak sugar water. Total volume of starter: approx 1L

Note- was uncomfortable putting all of the wort into the 30L fermenter, so only used 26L + most of starter. Pitched Tuesday Jan 12.

Measured OG: 1.058

Made happy bubbles for a few days, then glug-glugs for a few more. Temperature was initial a bit high, maximized around 23-24 C, put ice packs on the fermenter, managed to get it down to 20Stuck the dry hops in around Sunday Jan 12.

Got all geared up to bottle with Fanch on Saturday - put in priming sugar, then took FG (oops). FG was 1.026-1.028? What? The green beer tastes sweet - as expected given the gravity.

So... we bottled anyway. What a mistake. Ended up with all bottle bombs - except perhaps one, which I let ferment separately in the starter fermenter.

After discussion with Mark H., I decided to crack the bottles carefully (see videos) and put them back in a fermenter. To kick start this, I made a starter with one of the bottles and some sugar, aiming for around 1.030. After letting that go for two days, I put it and most of the bottles (what I didn't lose to foam on opening) into the fermenter (about 9-10 L total volume). The measured gravity at that point was 1.022. The airlock started gurgling right away so I guess that's good.