Sunday, April 5, 2009

Bottling Day!

Ah, bottling day. . . . the least fun and most tedious time for a home brewer. This might be the single reason it was so long between batches of brew for us. This is the hardest part of the whole process to get jazzed up about. Never has one of the beacons of the home brewing movement, Charlie Papazian's, Golden Rule ("Relax, Don't Worry, Have a Homebrew") seem more important to remember. We decided to take it a step further and have a BEER BOTTLING PARTY! Misery does love company, after all! So we invited (co-brewers) Carries parents over, had some prime rib and a few brews, and bottled our tasty ale!

First came the tedious task of washing the bottles, rinsing them out, sticking them in a sanitizer bath, and rinsing them again! I didn't take pictures of that, because reliving that just might bring me to tears. So i have this picture to present, in honor of Victory!

bottling1

After all that tedium, the rest of the process isn't nearly as bad. First you have to siphon the fermented wort out of the fermenter into the bottling bucket:

bottling2

we had a bit of trouble with the gasket around the bottling bucket spigot leaking (not shown here), which cause a little more agitation of the beer then I would like, but I am not going to stress about it, as it is a well known fact that stress ruins beer's flavor (RDWHAHB and all, y'know. . .). When that was settled, and after a quick dose of priming sugar, into the bottles it goes:

bottling3

After that, slap on the caps and we are ready to go!

bottling4

Well, not quite! Alas, more of the hardest part of homebrewing to come. More waiting. This particular ale need four weeks to bottle condition before its really going to shine (though I plan on checking on it in 2, to see how it is coming along). So the waiting game resumes again. . .

I think I'll have a beer and plan out my next batch!