Hey guys! So, time has passed, there were many many bubbles in our airlock from the fermentation, and now its time to bottle!
First and foremost, cleanliness is ESSENTIAL. If everything isn't clean, you can wind up getting rogue yeasts and random particles from the air that can flavor or even ruin your beer. So, we cleaned out the carboy that we're about to transfer to, and soaked our bottles and bottle caps all in a solution specifically designed to clean receptacles for potables.
Half of my bottles for this batch came from our very good friend Andy who got us some brand spankin' new bottles, as opposed to some reused ones. It was so nice of him!
So, now its time to open up our fermenting bucket and see how everything turned out. I'm so scared at this point, because (as I mentioned last post) it didn't taste or smell anything like you would want beer to taste or smell. Drum roll please...
It doesn't look too appealing... eeeww...
But oh man!! It smells SOO good... smells like beer! Even smells like a Hefeweizen! And it tastes like room temperature, flat beer! (which it should at this point) I was elated! I couldn't stop smiling, I was so excited!
So now, we need to prepare our bottling or "priming" sugar. We add this to our beer as we bottle and the (still-active) yeast will continue to ferment and add a little more alcohol and, more importantly, will add CO2, making it nice and bubbly.
We'll go ahead and boil that down to a syrup and let it cool before we add it. Just like before, if it's too hot, it will kill our yeast.
Next it's time to siphon our beer from the bucket to the carboy. I've never siphoned anything before, but it is surprisingly easy. It's all about suction and pressure, very interesting to figure out. Anyway, I basically just fill up my tubing (after sterilizing, of course) with water and hold the ends closed...
Then we stick one end in here...
Then the other end in here...
And... VOILA!! It just starts flowing...
In the book I've been using, The Complete Joy Of Homebrewing, I'm loving the fact that at every step, the author keeps reminding me to "relax, just relax, this is easy"... Its on almost every step, at the beginning of each step he reminds you to relax, and it makes me happy every time I read it because it really does help to just take a breath and realize that we aren't doing brain surgery and it really is just fun and seemingly hard to mess up!
And, as per usual, Lila was helping...
So, now we've got a full carboy, and what's left over in the bucket is pretty freaking gross. I didn't really understand why we needed to transfer to another vessel if we're just going to go straight to bottles after that... then I realized...
It's because you don't want this gunk in your beer... eeew....
So then we add our sugar to our beer and move the carboy up to the counter, and Shannon starts rinsing out the bottles for me.
We set up the siphon just like before, except this time it has my bottle filler attachment on the end. Its a really cool and simple device. There is a sort of button on the end of the tube, and when you push the button it opens up the tube and the beer comes out, so you hold that against the bottom of the bottle until its full and when you lift the tube up it stops the flow.
It's so exciting, once we got the siphon working well, it was as simple as filling up the bottles and then using the capper to put caps on, making sure it seals air-tight.
Then we've got bottled beer!!
Repeat a few more times...
And this was our take! 50 bottles of beer!
Now these will go back in the closet for 2 weeks to let the yeast do its thing. This time, since there is no airlock and the bottles are airtight, the CO2 it creates will stay in the bottle, carbonizing the beer. Then we age for two more weeks, then we drink!
Next week's post is going to be an introduction to my budding curiosity into the world of physics, quantum physics, quantum mechanics, relativity and what sparked my curiosity. I realize it doesn't have anything to do with beer, but that's just the miscellany that is my life!
Thanks for reading,
Grey
No comments:
Post a Comment