In a marathon session on Wednesday, October 13th the first SUDSY cask ale was bottled. Our Belgian Tripel, Monk's Blood, sat in a Robert Mondavi Cabernet oak cask for three months. Although this oaked beer was an experiment for us, it was a rather large (and expensive) experiment, so we were fairly apprehensive. It didn't help that we had a tasting of the Monk's Blood about a month ago and it was... well, I don't want to say it was undrinkable... so I won't. When we siphoned off a small amount into a glass, however, we were immediately impressed by the improvements in both its color and fruity aroma. It also had remarkable clarity. Upon tasting it, the Monk's Blood had a surprisingly light yet distinctly oaky flavor and had mellowed more than any of us had dared hope it could in a single month. We even tasted it against our control batch of tripel, bottled
before ever being introduced to the oak cask. The oaked version won quite handily.We first kegged five gallons of it to share at our second (annual?) SUDSY fruity-off on October 22nd and then got down to business. Dan had prepared a starter since we weren't sure how viable the yeast would be after this time, so we began, five gallons at a time: filling the bottling bucket from the cask, adding a cup and a half of the starter, adding the primer and filling up the bottles. Once we got the assembly line of sanitizing, filling and capping down it actually went pretty smoothly, if not quickly. We weren't in a hurry, though. And were actively discussing future SUDSY activities, the potential we have for competing in some national competitions in the coming year and options for our next two cask ales (in addition to the cabernet cask, we also inherited an old bourbon oak cask from the fantastic folks over at Blackfoot). As midnight neared we were capping and stacking the last of the bottles and draining the bottoms of our own glasses. All told, the final tally was somewhere a little over 350 bottles, one keg and four fully content brewers.
