Now it’s time to bottle
As I’ve mentioned before this blog is set up for more my purposes to document how I’ve brewed so this way I can use it as a reference. If you enjoy reading this…great. OK, let’s go: About an hour ago I tested the beer inside of my Mr. Beer kit (see entry here) and all seemed well. So now it’s time to bottle.
I brought the Mr. Beer keg downstairs from my ‘fermenting room” (see entry) and let it sit for a few minutes on a layer of newspaper that was on top of my butcher block in the kitchen. I wanted to let some of the trube (the funky stuff in the bottom of the keg) settle back down before I put it all in my bottles.
While the trube was settling I took my SaniRinse (for sanitizing) and put it in one of the gallon water jugs left over from my brew day and added it as I filled it with luke warm water. I then sanitized my funnel, measuring spoons, and a plate to place them on and put all of that to the side.
I decided to use an assembly line approach to the bottling.
Taking each step for each bottle then moving onto the next step. I took the funnel and filled the clean empty bottles half way up with the mixture, capped it, and shook the bottles. I uncapped the bottles and emptied the sanitizer in the sink, shaking out the last bits of sanitizer.
Then it was on to the sugar. I put 2 1/2 teaspoons of sugar in each bottle using the funnel to get all that sweet goodness into the bottle. This sugar gets eaten by the yeast which produces carbonation and more alcohol. I have read many warnings about over sugaring your beer. If you over sugar your beer you will make “beer bombs”…exploding beers. Not a good thing.
Now that all of the bottles had the proper amount of sugar it was time to bottle. I tilted the bottles on an angle so there would be as little air mixing with the beer as possible. Over oxygenation could cause “off flavors”. Each bottle got filled to just above the neck, capped, and then turned it gently to get the sugar mixed into the beer.
As I was getting to the end of the bottle process I realized I was not going to have enough beer to fill the last bottle. If you cap a beer too low it may also cause a “beer bomb” so…What to do? I figured I’d try a little experiment. As the spigot trickled out the brew I tilted the keg ever so slightly as to not get any trube in the bottle. I then marked that beer with an “x”.
Once they were all filled up and capped I decided to grab a box and toss them in there, so this way it was easier to bring back upstairs. I also thought it may help insulated the bottles to temper them so they are less likely to have spikes in heat or cold. Now it was back to the closet for the beer for at least another week.
I thought I’d try the “trubed” beer and poured it into a glass. The beer looked and tasted like it did a week ago. More than likely this was from the presence of the yeast in the liquid.
Here’s what the inside of the barrel looked like after most of the liquid was gone:
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