Now that your beer has been brewed, and has been through its primary and secondary fermentation phase, it’s time that we finally get that beer into bottles so that you can enjoy your very first batch. As with all steps in the brewing process, we will begin by sanitizing all of the equipment that is going to be touching our beer. The equipment that is needed on bottling day, and that must be sanitized is as follows: beer bottles, bottle caps, tubing, auto-siphon, primary fermenter/bottling bucket, (we’ll expand on this), bucket lid, bottle drying rack (if you have one – I highly recommend getting one, as it make bottling day much simpler), beer spoon, hydrometer, and bottle filler. This is also the step in the process where the priming sugar comes into play, so we will be preparing that mixture while our sanitized equipment is drying.
Once all equipment is thoroughly sanitized, we’re going to prepare the priming sugar solution. Priming sugar is used to carbonate the bottled beer, as the yeast has already consumed all of the sugars in the beer and converted them to alcohol, so we need to add additional sugars back into the beer in order to wake-up the yeast in the beer and provide them with a food source to create the desired carbonation in our bottles. Most often, you will find priming sugar in 5 oz. bags, however, for a standard 5 gallon batch of beer, you do not want to use the entire bag. I recommend using between 4 and 4.5 oz. of the priming sugar, and saving the remainder for a future batch that you brew. 5 oz. tends to be too much, and will over-carbonate your beer, and make a huge mess when you crack one open, as well as waste beer that you worked so hard to make. If you want to play it safe, keep it in the 4-4.5 oz. range, or split the difference and go with 4.25 oz.
Yet again, we are not going to use tap water, so make sure to use fresh, bottled watered to mix the priming sugar solution together. To make the solution, all you need is 4 – 4.5 oz. of the priming sugar added to 2 cups of boiling water. Make sure to stir the mixture constantly while it is boiling for 5 minutes. Once the 5 minutes have elapsed, your solution is ready to be added to the beer. We’ll let the solution sit and cool down while we transfer our beer from the secondary fermenter (usually a carboy) and into our bottling bucket. The bottling bucket is usually a dual-purpose vessel, as it’s also your primary fermenting bucket. The bottling bucket is purpose-built with a spigot at the bottom, which is where we will connect the tubing and bottle filler to actually get the beer into the bottles. As with all transfers from vessel-to-vessel, we want to put the auto-siphon down into the beer, and the end of the tubing down into the bottom of the new vessel (bottling bucket). There may still be very small amounts of sediment in the carboy at this stage, so make sure to keep the auto-siphon above the line where there is any obvious sediment. Before activating the siphon, make 1 more check that the spigot on your bottling bucket is closed, lest any of your beer start to dump onto the floor. With everything doublechecked, you can start the transfer from the carboy to the bottling bucket. I recommend having the carboy above the bucket (on a table, sturdy chair, etc.) and the bucket on the floor so gravity will help with the speed of the transfer.
After the beer has been transferred to the bottling bucket, you are now ready to mix in the priming sugar solution into your beer. Before adding the priming sugar solution, take 1 final gravity reading. This final reading is your true final gravity, so grab your notes, and calculate your final ABV. Now, pour the solution into the beer in your bucket, and gently stir for 1 minute. That’s all there is to it. As with all steps, again, gentle is the goal, as we don’t want to needlessly expose the beer to any more oxygen than will happen naturally during this process. Once the solution is stirred in, you’re ready to get everything connected, and your bottles filled. Put the sanitized lid back on the bucket, and put the bucket at a higher elevation than where you will be filling the bottles. I typically put the bottling bucket on the my kitchen counter top, and my bottles on a short side table where I can sit and fill them 1-by-1. Connect the tubing to the end of the spigot on your bucket, and connect the other end to the bottle filler (bottle fillers can be a bit finicky, so I always make sure I have 1 or 2 more laying around and sanitized just in case 1 doesn’t work well, or allows beer to flow after the spring has been closed between fillings). Simply place the end of the bottle filler wand into the bottom of a bottle, and it will begin to fill with beer. Stop filling once there is ca. 1 inch of space remaining to the top of the bottle. Place a cap on the top of the bottle, and use the bottle capper to crimp the top onto the bottle, and you’ve got your beer bottled. Repeat this process for each bottle until everything is bottled up, and you have successfully completed bottling day.
After your beer is bottled, is a final waiting period for your beer before it’s ready to drink. As with the fermentation stages, the amount of time you’ll want to wait largely depends on the style of beer you brewed. You will want to move the bottles to a dark room away from light and heat (just as with all stages of the brewing process), and allow a minimum of 2 weeks of bottle conditioning before drinking. Bottle conditioning is just the term used for the bottled beer to become carbonated by the added priming sugars. At the 2 week point after bottling, crack one open and try your very first home-brewed beer. If the beer isn’t carbonated enough for your liking, give it another week and try again. You can repeat that process as many times as needed. For most beers that would be brewed from a ready-made kit, the beer should be ready to drink within 2 -3 weeks max. If you made your own recipe and went with a much higher ABV beer, this will most likely take longer.
If you made it to this stage, you now have successfully brewed your very first batch of beer using the malt extract brewing method. If you’re like me, you not only learned a lot, but feel a tremendous amount of satisfaction in having brewed your very own beer. Not only can you brew exactly what you want to drink, but it is much cheaper to brew your own quality beer than it is to buy it all the time (up-front equipment/supplies costs aside). Now you can take what you learned on your first batch and apply it to your second batch and beyond. Don’t be afraid to come up with your own ideas and tweaks to recipes and interesting flavor additions. Being in charge of what you brew is half of the fun of the process. I also enjoy revisiting old recipes and brewing them again to see what I think over time, and slowly adjusting and tweaking until it’s exactly what I want in a beer. Wherever you go from here, I hope you enjoyed brewing your first batch. It just takes a little bit of patience, and a little bit of time, but the end result is not only gaining a life skill, but getting to brew and drink exactly what you want. Cheers!
The Craft Beer Corner 