fourth brew (Belgian witbier), part 7

Measured the gravity and tasted the Belgian witbier. Gravity is around 1.015, or about where it should be finishing. Every day or two I've been rocking the carboy, which causes a bit of additional bubbling but not much. That's a drop of only .002 in nearly two weeks, so I'm fairly sure it's done.

The flavor is still disappointing. It may have improved slightly since racking and tasting, but I'm not thrilled. It's certainly identifiable as a witbier but has a harshness that seems out of character for the style. I'll try to get it primed and bottled this weekend. Perhaps a few more weeks of conditioning and some carbonation will help.

I stopped by the Cellar to check into ways to reuse all these very nice 750 ml Belgian bottles I've accumulated. It did not look promising without using some serious corking hardware. Some web searching confirms that they right way to do this is with purpose-built corks and a beefy corker. The plastic champagne stoppers won't produce a reliably tight seal. Between buying the corks and wire cages at $.20 apiece and up, and renting a corker (not going to buy one for $80 - $120), it doesn't make much sense.