Bottling 101

Bottling is far and away the most labor intensive part of the homebrewing process.  As with every aspect of the brewing, sanitation is the key to success when bottling.  The same environment that yeast thrive in happens to be the same environment that every other organism that could ruin your beer thrives in.  The hard part of bottling is sanitizing every bottle.  If you are re-using bottles and find one with mold, I recommend throwing it out. Although you can feasibly clean and sanitize the bottle, is it really worth the risk? You need to wash and then sanitize every bottle (these days I use star-san rinse free sanitizer).  Although it is rinse free, I rinse each bottle right before I fill it with beer to make sure that the bottle is clean. In addition to sanitizing the bottles you need to boil the bottle caps for at least 15 minutes.

Once the bottles are all sanitized you must boil the priming sugar for 10-15 minutes.  I use a cup of priming sugar and a cup of water.  The yeast convert the priming sugar into carbon dioxide and the pressure inside the bottle that is created carbonates the beer. It's science.

In order to bottle, you need to siphon the beer from the fermenter to the bottling bucket.  This is the point in which the priming sugar mixture is added to the beer.  The force of the siphoning beer is sufficient enough to mix the two.

Two necessary tools for the job include a bottling attachment and a bottle capper (big red thing).  The bottling attachment is a spring loaded tip that attaches to the bottling hose.  It only dispenses beer when the tip is pressed to the bottom of the bottle. When the bottle is filled you pull out the tube and a perfect amount of head space is left in the bottle.

Once you fill a bottle it is best to immediately place a cap loosely on the top of the bottle and continue filling all of the bottles.  Only after all the bottles are filled should you seal the bottles tight with the capper.  The purpose of this step is to allow the yeast to create enough CO2 to push the oxygen out of the top of the bottle.  Oxygen in beer can contribute off flavors, so this is one extra step to help improve the taste of your beer.  When the bottles are filled seal them all with capper and you're done! (well sort of)   It takes 2-4 weeks for the beer to condition.  After 3 weeks you can finally drink.  I have read that you should put the beer in the fridge for 2-3 days before drinking for best results, but let's be honest, after waiting 5 weeks, I pop one in the freezer and drink it 30 minutes later.

Brown Ale

I have been very busy over the last month, both in life, and with brewing. So busy, in fact, that I have fallen way behind on writing these posts.  This begins the first of a few rapid fire posts re-capping the last month (in which I brewed three beers).

A week after the IPA I brewed a brown ale.  Shout out to Clemente for doing the brunt work on the recipe.  As you probably noticed the majority of the beers I have made up until the now are leaning more towards the 'extreme' side.  Double IPAs, coffee porters, and jalapeno chocolate stouts, while delicious, are not exactly beers for newcomers to the craft beer world.  With that I wanted to make a beer that could be enjoyed by even the newest member of the craft beer club (a first time customer to my theoretical brew pub perhaps?).  This brown ale is meant to be a good session ale.  BeerAdvocate defines a session beer:

session beer (noun)

Any beer that contains no higher than 5 percent ABV, featuring a balance between malt and hop characters (ingredients) and, typically, a clean finish - a combination of which creates a beer with high drinkability. The purpose of a session beer is to allow a beer drinker to have multiple beers, within a reasonable time period or session, without overwhelming the senses or reaching inappropriate levels of intoxication. (Yes, you can drink and enjoy beer without getting drunk.) 


Brewing Details:


Ingredients:
Grains:
2-row malt
Crystal malt
Amber malt
Chocolate malt

Hops:
East Kent Goldings
Hallertau
Willamette

Yeast:
American Ale

Misc:
Brown Sugar

OG: 1.050
FG: 1.016
ABV: 4.5%


After the coffee porter coming in too light in terms of mouth feel I wanted to make sure this brown ale was a little fuller bodied and that the malt character would shine through.  In order to make that happen I mashed at a higher temperature (155-156).  

Here is a photo of the wort during lautering/sparging.  Lautering is the process of removing the wort form the spent grains.  Sparging is the act of pouring hot water (~180 degrees) over the spent grains to rinse the remaining sugars from the grains.

I boiled for the usual 1 hr. I used whole Kent Goldings hops (because I had them leftover from a previous beer) for bittering, Hallertau (pellet hops) for finishing, and Willamette (pellet as well) for aroma.  A pound of brown sugar was also added to enhance the flavor. After boiling the wort was cooled and the yeast was pitched.  The brown ale then joined the IPA in the closet to ferment.

To my surprise this was the first time that I had two fermenters full with beer at the same time.  I actually had to postpone brewing the brown ale in order to go buy a second air lock.

The brown ale was bottled in the same weekend as the IPA (there will be a separate post for that), and today I had the first taste.

This is a delicious beer!  It fits all the requirements laid out for a session ale:  malty, well balanced, low alcohol, clean finish, and easy to drink.   The color is a very nice dark brown. The aroma is malty and subtle.  You can taste the maltiness, the brown sugar,  and there is a nice coffee note that compliments the overall flavor. The finish leaves you reaching for another sip before you even put down the glass.  I am very pleased with this beer. When I brew it again I won't change a thing.