Bottling Day

So, after four weeks of patience and fortitude, the day of reckoning arrived and it was time to bottle my first batch of homebrew.  This was a lot easier that I initially imagined it was going to be.  In fact, I was planning on a couple hour process and it ended up taking less than an hour once we actually got the brew flowing between fermenter and bottling bucket.  But I skip ahead.

First thing was to prep the bottles which involved much cleaning and sterilizing.  I ended up doing most of this Friday evening just to save time today and also to give everyone a nice contact high as we watched The Fellowship of the Ring.  Removing adhesive from old Bud Light bottles is not necessarily the most fun way to spend the evening, but it worked out in the long run as I had to purchase only one case of new beer bottles after getting the Bud bottles from a friend at work.  After de-labeling, the bottles went into the dishwasher for a cleaning and sterilization.  This morning I then yanked them out, filled the sink with water and bleach and resterilized them just to be on the safe side.  At the same time I also got the tubing, siphon, and bottling bucket filled with the bleach/water mixture so they could get all nice and sterile as well.

The only major snag I ran into in all this prep work was with the priming sugar.  When the beer comes out of the fermenter it's not carbonated.  All the nice gas that was created during the fermentation process went right out the airlock.  So, you have to add more sugar into the beer as you bottle it so that it will ferment as in conditions in the bottle.  I thought I had read that you could use plain sugar or a mixture of sugar and corn syrup for this priming sugar, and I thought to myself, "Cool, no need to buy priming sugar.  I've got the supplies at home already".  Wrong.

The priming sugar actually has to be finely processed corn sugar, which I don't have laying around the house and I don't think I could buy anywhere within a 30 mile radius of home.  But fortune smiles every now and again upon us and we get lucky.  Last week I purchased the ingredients for my next batch of homebrew, and I got a extract kit this time rather than an all grain kit.  And lo and behold in the box of ingredients is a bag of priming sugar.  Now I just have to remember to purchase another bag of priming sugar so this doesn't happen again with the next batch.

So, priming sugar goes into boiling water for five minutes.  Boiling water goes into the bottling bucket, and then we begin siphoning the beer from the fermenter to the bottler.  Now this is where I'm thankful that I spent the little bit extra for my brewing equipment.  Part of the package is what's called the Autosiphon.  I'm used to starting a siphon by inserting tubing into bucket, start sucking on end of tubing, get a mouthful of whatever you're trying to siphon and then rapidly shoving the tubing into your container to catch the rest.  Not with this baby.  Insert the tube into the bucket, pump once or twice on the handle, and you've got a neat, clean siphon going between buckets.

After that it was really just a matter of attaching the tubing and filling the bottles with the wand.  I went with standard beer bottles and caps this time, mostly because I'm poor.  I would like to use self capping bottles in the future.  The nice ones with the attached locking stopper that seals down tightly and can be reused over and over without a capper.  But at $20 for a box of 12, it's not happening anytime soon.  I did get two large liter bottles, though, that have the self stopper just to try them out and make sure this is the way I want to go in the future.  I jokingly refer to these at my "40s" and am seriously considering wrapping them in brown paper bags before bringing them to the table to serve from.'

After that it was the 12 oz. bottles.  I ended up with total of 38 bottles of beer plus the two large bottles.  A little short of what I expected, but the dross at the bottom of the bucket looked a little nasty and I didn't really want to have that sitting in the bottom of my homebrew.  So, we go a little short on the beer, but hopefully it's that much better.  Now I'm down to another week of waiting till I can crack one open and see how the finished product turns out.  Hopefully no bottles explode in the mean time.