A couple hours later and a bit of perk has commenced as expected. I do hold my breath until this happens and I know that outside of any calamity there should be a perk, but it is the waiting that harries me.
When I bottled my first 24 bottles, I decided to try the shrink wrap ends on the bottles. These come in packages of 25 and look pretty nice. There are no directions, but I heard you just run a hairdryer over them to get the shrinkage going. This is similar to the heat shrink rolls I used on radio controlled gliders in the past and was pretty confident in what to do.
That is...until I looked it over. I heated the crap out of that plastic and it still looks gawdawful! I can't even think of a good Charlie Sheen-ism to describe this hot mess. Grrr.... Well, when it rains, grab an umbrella. Which, by the way, we have been blessed with an abundance these days. I decided to go back to the wax ends. They look very nice but unfortunately, as I mentioned earlier, do not prevent a perky metheglin from blowing its cork. This batch should be a still metheglin and I am crossing my fingers for now. I do very much love a little sparkle in my metheglin but I did end what I think was the fermentation run and put a squirt of inert gas in each bottle to clear out any bit of O2 that may have been left.
In order to put the wax on the tips, Robin and I went shopping. We stopped at the local URM store which specializes in bulk type restaurant food and supplies ans I picked up an aluminum measuring container. It is tall and not too round so it should hold the water and wax at a good level to use on the bottles. Here is a pic of it on the stove:
The wax comes in beads so they melt easier. I got the wax from a local ACE Hardware store that I frequent to gawk at the brewing supplies. It took about 10 minutes on medium heat to melt the wax and then I took it off the burner. You don't want it to boil as it will get a lot of air bubbles in the wax and that doesn't work too well on your bottles. There are a couple web videos you can look up to see how the technique is done. Basically, you want to dip the tip straight down in the melted wax to the level you want and slowly turn it as you draw it out. Re-dip if you want a bit thicker wax. Keep turning the bottle as the wax dries to reduce the drip lines in the wax. If you did a good job, set it aside. Keep working through your bottles and then you can address any bad ones by peeling off the wax on those ones, re-melting it, and doing the process over.
A tip in nice tips: use a knife (I use a tongue depressor or popsicle stick that I got from a hobby store) and get a bit of wax from the pot. Us this wax to cover the cork and make the tip level with the lip of the bottle. This will give you a nice end at the top of the wax:
Much snappier than the shrink wrap fiasco. You can polish the wax later on with a soft cloth. I do that and it gets out the slight runs and brings out a bit of a shine to it. Back in the box went the two dozen bottles. Not to get thos labels printed... I'm thinking of getting these done at the local bindery. I talked to a guy there a while back. I didn't get a price on the labels, but (famous last words) they shouldn't be too expensive.
Outside of this, the bees have not been overly active outside due to the weather. I have gone out a few times to re-fill the sugar water to keep up their comb drawing efforts. They go through a fair amount of sugar these days as the weather has kept them indoors quite a bit. The colony is growing and I added a shallow box a week or so back. When I add the next box, I am putting in a queen excluder . It looks kind of like a fine cooking rack. The wires are spaced just enough to allow the workers through, but the queen can't get her abdomen through. The next boxes are for the family, not the hive. We hope to get at least three boxes full this year. Based on the hive activity, I think this should be very attainable for our girls.
I do believe a short nap is in order. This is my last weekend on graveyards for a bit and I become a day walker for a month or so. Take care, folks. The couch is calling!
