Bottling chaos

Well, my plan of cask conditioning for a few weeks has gone down the pan.  I changed my mind and decided to bottle both casks today after just 3 days in the cask.  The picture shows the chaos that ensued!

Actually it didn't take very long.  9 gallons minus the ullage ended up as 67 pints bottled plus a pint sunk by myself.  All done in about 80 minutes.

This bottling form cask is very straight forward.  I use a "little bottler" connected to the cask tap.  To make things as easy as possible I brought my floor capper into the utility room.

I didn't use any priming sugar as there'll be a couple of gravity points worth left to ferment over time.  The only problem is I don't have a very good track record of giving my beers time to mature. The lure of the malty, hoppy lovliness is just too much for me.  Now where can I hide it so I don't drink it all???

A Spot of Cask Conditioning

The AK's been in the fermenter for 7 days at 19°C (ok, so it started a little cold) and then another 3 days at 6°C.  So, I've just put it into two 4.5 gallon casks.  I managed to get a small 3 gallon keg out of it too which I've taken the liberty of purging with CO2 and shaking a little condition into.  I like to do this rather than throw beer away.

The plan is that I'll drink a few pints from the keg and then at the weekend I'll bottle what's left.  The casks will be left for a few weeks to do their magic.  Then I'll spend a few hours bottling it all up before hiding it from myself.