crown codes

I've posted about bottling before, and in that post I mentioned the idea that each bottle can become its own world, with the contents of that bottle following a unique path that won't necessarily replicate the path of the other bottles. For example, in every batch of beer I bottle, I seem to end up with varying levels of carbonation--some fizzier than others, no two exactly alike. It's likely that these differences result from different amounts of priming sugar entering each bottle--I add a specified amount of priming sugar to the fermenter just before bottling, but that sugar doesn't necessarily disperse perfectly evenly. It's also likely that different bottles end up with different amounts of time to condition--I keep my bottles in an 75 degree Fahrenheit basement, and throw them in the fridge a half dozen at a time, so the last half dozen to leave fermentable temperatures for the yeast-numbing fridge temps might have had an extra month or two of time for the yeast to build CO2.

Recently I finished bottling another batch of my Southern Breakfast Stout, and I realized that I've developed an esoteric sort of coding system for the crowns, in hopes of giving me a hint of how the beer in the bottle will turn out. I think it's interesting when new information--like the meaning of the marks I put on a bottle's cap--sort of develops out of its own volition. In the picture above you get a hint of what I mean by coding. Every bottle in the shot comes from the same batch, but you've got three different types of cap markings:

SB: On every bottle, stands for Southern Breakfast. Most homebrewers probably initial their caps, in order to tell the beers apart once you've got selections from several brews sitting side by side. I certainly do.

SB underlined: I didn't sanitize enough crowns for the batch--I had a second pile of crowns that I forgot to throw in boiling water for a quick pasteurization. I could have left the bottles open while I brought more water to a boil, and threw the extra caps in, but I didn't bother. I just capped the bottles with unsanitized crowns, and marked those crowns by underlining the SB. If something goes wrong with those bottles, I'll have one possible reason why.

SB starred: Usually, at the end of a bottling session, you end up with a bottle that isn't completely filled. Oftentimes I'll try to top this bottle up by pouring some of the dregs from the bottom of the fermenter into it manually. Extra yeast and sediment, more potential oxygenation, and an abnormal level of liquid. I drink it anyway, but I mark it with a star to know which bottle it is.