Day 8 - Is it ready yet?

There are really only three active days in making beer in small batches like this: cooking day, bottling day and tasting day. These days are a week apart. So for a week now the beer has been thinking about itself and being active on its own. But it’s done with all that, at least for now.

Today we prime and bottle. And that over there –> on the right is an example of the equipment you need to do it. A lot of beer bottles have plain metal caps, and the contraption in the front is a capper. Place cap on bottle, put capper over it, and push down on the arms until you feel it squeeze tight (before you break the glass).

You can also buy screw-top bottles - but make sure you buy the kind made for this purpose, because they are made of extra-thick plastic. Try this in a Coke bottle and your bottle will explode. Remember - you’re creating CO2 here! The bottle is going to try to expand over the next week.

The green bottle is a different kind of cap that’s sort of like a cork attached to the bottle. Some beers actually corked in different ways, but usually with a metal “cage” over the cork like champagne has. Many beers, like champagne, have the last of their fermentation done in the bottle, and the cage is necessary so the corks don’t go popping prematurely from the pressure in side the bottle.

Step One, Prime your Bottles:

In this particular type of brewing we don’t filter the yeast out of the beer after it’s done. It’s really your choice, but it’s simpler if you don’t. This type of brewing, as mentioned above, completes the last of the necessary fermentation right in the bottle. That’s why you have to prime them.

All you do when you prime them is put approximately 3/4 tsp brewing sugar per 12 oz in your bottles. As the picture to the left shows, use a funnel so you don’t create a giant mess.

Step Two, Pour in the Beer:

The beer that’s been fermenting comes next. My dad’s kit has a convenient spout on it for pouring. Quite nice, and I recommend it. I tried imagining ladling the beer out or some other suctioning method, and it didn’t seem as good.

Pour beer into each bottle kind of at an angle so the beer doesn’t foam so much and you can see how high you’re filling each bottle. If it foams, let it sit for a moment before topping it off. Fill longnecks about halfway up the neck (see illustration, right).

For ALL bottles just be careful not to fill too much so that the continuing fermentation has room to expand. If you don’t leave room, your bottles will explode, and my, won’t that be a mess.

A Note About Yeast:

The beer you’re pouring into bottles right now contains yeast. Over the last week your yeast that you initially added has been Livin’ Large - it had all the sugar it could eat, and the alcohol content wasn’t high enough to kill it. So it multiplied and there’s now more of it in your vat than you put into it to begin with.

That yeast will continue to ferment using the sugar you primed your bottles with.

As you’re bottling your beer, when you get toward the end of your vat you need to make sure that the bulk of the yeast solids (the gross white stuff at the bottom) don’t start pouring into your bottles. You just need a little yeast in each bottle, not a cupful of gooey stuff.

Step Three, Cap the Bottles:

After the beer has settled, just cap each bottle off and set it aside. That’s me there workin’ the bottle capper, left. Exciting stuff.

And voila - a bevy of bottles (right), which I put in to a box and covered in a quiet corner of my house. Over the next week, the yeast will continue to produce CO2 and alcohol. This time, though, the CO2 isn’t released and carbonates the yummy contents.

Well, that’s it for my Week O’ Beer. I hope those that have read have enjoyed the process. In a week, I’ll report back about the end result of this batch of beer, show you how the color came out, etc. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been inspired to make more beer.

I like brewing for the same reason I always like crafting — I get to go through the process of making something, and I enjoy the (useful!) end result more because it was the work of my own two hands–and my dad’s two hands in this case!!

Cheers, Miriam