Learning to Homebrew: Part 2 - Bottling

We were back at the Brewer’s for the second phase in ‘Learning to Homebrew. ‘ Most of the work was done last time around. In between classes, Curt took care of switching the beer to it’s secondary fermentation container. This time, there was much less brewing and much more drinking. Not bad.

The bottling went pretty quickly. The process consisted of sterilizing the tools, adding sugar to the mix, filling the bottles and capping. The bucket was filled with water & bleach, caps were boiled in water and the bottles went through a couple cycles in the dishwasher. Curt admitted that the dishwasher method is a shortcut and some may frown upon it, but he hasn’t had any problems yet.

Once the tools were ready, Rob had the honor of siphoning the beer into the bottling bucket. The siphoning separates the beer from the chunky stuff.

Once in the bucket a corn sugar solution was added so the yeast has something feast on. The whole yeast thing was explained to me in terms I could easily understand. “Yeast hangs out in the beer. . . eating all the sugar, pissing alcohol and farting carbonation.” Brilliant.

The bottles were then filled and capped one by one. So easy, a third grader could do it. The bottled beer needs to be stored in dark place between 62 & 70 degrees for the yeast to stay active. We still need to wait another 4 weeks or so before we taste the final product. And as long as the conditions are right the beer should improve over time.

While I’m on the subject of tasting. . . We tried a couple beers worth mentioning. We started off the night with Boddingtons English Pale Ale in a can. They serve Boddingtons on tap at Jack Quinn’s Irish Pub in downtown Colorado Springs. I’ve had a few pints of it and thought the canned version held up pretty well to it’s drought counterpart.

My favorite beer of the night ( and all of 2008 so far) was the Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA. Thats some good shits! This Imperial IPA boasts a not too shabby 9% ABV– making it both very tasty and extremely efficient. The 90 Minute has earned a permanent spot on my shopping list.

Well that’s all I’ve got to say about that. I’ll let you know how it turns out.