Bottling 002

It’s been 3 weeks since I put my second batch into the fermenter, so I needed to get this one bottled.

Last weekend I was in Portland and this weekend my parents are coming to visit, which leaves me with the only option being an evening bottling, which I was trying to avoid because it can take a few hours.

I did it last night, though, and I gotta say that I am not 100% confident this batch will be good:
First, I had to rush the sterilizing process for the bottles. Then a couple of the bottle caps had rust on them. Also, I followed the instructions in Complete Guide and primed my beer in the bucket before bottling it. Last time I just boiled the malt & water and added it into the fermenter then bottled. I’m kinda nervous that priming in the bucket gave it another chance to get contaminated.

On the other hand, I tasted it and liked it. It’s not quite as hoppy as some of the stronger IPAs I’m used to drinking, but is definitely hoppier than your standard pale ale.

Also, 1.020 @ 70 F.

It’s in bottles

Talia and I bottled the first batch today.

It went much faster than I expected it to, but only because I had someone helping me. Doing that alone would’ve been a huge mess and taken several hours. But with two of us, we got it all done in about an hour. Of course, that doesn’t include all the time it took to get the labels off the bottles, clean, sanitize, etc.

Now it needs to sit in the closet for about a month. It’d be nice to be able to put it somewhere that is a constant 60 degrees, but I don’t have any place like that. My closet is a pretty constant 70, though, so it ought to work. At least for now. Come summer, I don’t know.

Batch 001 in the carboy

The sediment

The last bottle didn’t get filled all the way, so I drank some. It’s actually good. A little bitter, a little citrus-y. I wish I had a more refined palate so that I could describe it better. I’m working on that. Talia says she really likes it, but I’m not positive she would say it was terrible if it was. I actually enjoyed it, though, and think it’ll be very good once it’s carbonated and cold. It’s not as dark and wintery as I was expecting, which is good since it won’t be ready ’til spring.

I poured some into a clear glass so you could see the color – much brighter than I expected. I took this with my iPhone and it’s actually pretty close to accurate.

Batch 001 in a clear glass

I also took a final hydrometer reading – 1.020.

Bottles

It’s almost time to put all this beer into bottles and that means I need bottles. Roughly five gallons of beer means roughly 60 bottles. Since I’ll be putting this batch into bottles and immediately starting another one with a shorter fermentation time, I’ll need to acquire a lot of bottles.

A few options come to mind for acquiring them:

• drinking a lot
• getting them from friends and neighbors
• buying them, or
• getting them from a local bar.

I’m opting for drinking a lot. But 60 is A LOT for me to finish in the time frame needed. Especially since most of my drinking is done in bars. And I’ll then have 60 beers and need another 60 in a few weeks. So I think I’m going to have to go for a combination of two or three of those options. I’ve got over 30 bottles saved on my own so far, and we’re having a bunch of people over tomorrow night, so that’ll help. It might even generate enough, but we’ll see. Probably not enough guys to pound through another 24.

I’m not a fan of buying bottles since I drink so much, so I think I’ll contact one of the bars on my block and try to get a bag of bottles from them. But I’d like to do at least one brew into 22s, so I’ll probably have to buy those.

Anyway, yesterday evening I spent a while trying to get labels off of the bottles I have. Most of them came off pretty well. In order of ease (for my own reference):

1. Sam Smith (no effort)
2. Sam Adams (easy)
3. Anchor (easy)
4. New Belgium (pretty easy)
5. New Holland (not bad)
6. Trader Joe’s (ugh)
7. Red Hook (nearly impossible, takes 2 days)

I soaked them overnight in a mix of bleach and dishwasher detergent. I know you’re not supposed to mix bleach with anything else, but if I cared about safety, I wouldn’t be making five gallons of beer in the first place.

Update: Having people over worked great. Now I have plenty of bottles and plenty of hangover. Also, putting bottles in the dishwasher is much easier than soaking them and trying to peel the labels off. I doubt it’s good for the dishwasher, and I’m definitely not using the heat dry. It worked for everything but the TJ’s bottles. I didn’t try the Red Hook ones.

fallen soldiers