Bottles
Serious beer geeks can often be found extolling the virtues of beers that are bottle conditioned, that is where refermentation takes place in the bottle in order to produce carbonation - a small amount of yeast and some additional fermentables are added before bottling to allow this process to take place. The alternative is to force carbonate beer en masse, filter, bottle and pasteurize so that there is no live yeast in the final bottle; this is seen as harsher and detrimental to the final quality of the product. Some brewers filter but do not pasteurize, which is an improvement. Some do not filter, their beer is naturally clear enough to go straight into the bottle, which is better still. But bottle conditioned beers still have a cachet and a reputations for high quality.
Why then do so many homebrewers, who are often very serious beer geeks indeed, package their beers in 5 gallon aluminium soda kegs and force carbonate them? Because bottling sucks, that's why. It's easy for a brewery, because they have machines to clean, sterilize and fill, but on the homebrew level, you are the machine.
I'm not set up for kegging, so I have no choice but to bottle condition. I also like have individual servings of beer packaged up rather than one big keg. It's a good workout, but I'm usually sore for a couple of days after bottling.
On Friday I bottled two batches, back to back. An English IPA that had been in primary for three weeks, the last two dry-hopped with Willamette, and an American wheat/rye summer ale that had been in primary for two weeks. I used an ice water bath (well, cooler) to try and cold-crash them a little for clarity. The gravity readings were the same as the ones I took a week or two back and the samples tasted good. The yeast I used in the wheat/rye seems to have brought out a little more "banana" than it did when used it for a wheat beer last year.
The actual filling and capping of the bottles isn't so bad, it's the cleaning and sanitizing that's a pain. I use larger bottles and do smaller batches so that I have less bottles to deal with, but even so I ended up clearning and sanitizing nearly 50 bottles. Cleaning should be a formality, because I always try to give the bottles a good hot rinse after being used. I'm a little anal, though, so I give them a good soak in a cleaning solution and a scrub with a bottle brush. Then they all have to cycle through sanitizer; just because it looks clean doesn't mean it's not contaminated with greedy microorganisms that want to muscle in on your yeast's territory.
Once you have everything sanitized, you can carry on to priming the beer and bottling it. After that, there's the cleanup. One smart-arse reply when somebody asks if you think they will enjoy homebrewing is to ask them if they enjoy doing the washing up. A large proportion of brewing is just trying to keep things clean. By the time I was done, I was pretty knackered. I flumphed on the couch and played Wii until it was past time to go to bed.
I'm hoping that the summer ale (provisionally titled "Reunion Ale" because it was brewed while Nora was out earning overtime at Reunion Weekend) at least will be good to go for Maine. I suspect that the IPA (I'll probably call it "India Ale" unless inspiration strikes me with its steely bat in the next few days) will take a little longer, since it came out quite strong. British Summertime, the English summer ale that I bottled a few weeks ago is coming into its own and the Spring Ale, which is down to a handful of bottles has matured into something really very good. My relatively furious brewing schedule has not yet produced the reserves of homebrew that I was hoping for, because its getting drunk quite quickly. I may have to up my batch size again.
We're prepping for our trip to Maine next week. We've been given the option of an extra day at the start, so we're going up on Friday. Nora's cousin will be house and Taz-sitting while we're gone. We're nervous about leaving Taz and we're going to miss him, but we're also excited about going away on our first real vacation for a while. I'm planning on hitting the Library this evening and leaving with an unfeasibly large pile of books.
Why then do so many homebrewers, who are often very serious beer geeks indeed, package their beers in 5 gallon aluminium soda kegs and force carbonate them? Because bottling sucks, that's why. It's easy for a brewery, because they have machines to clean, sterilize and fill, but on the homebrew level, you are the machine.
I'm not set up for kegging, so I have no choice but to bottle condition. I also like have individual servings of beer packaged up rather than one big keg. It's a good workout, but I'm usually sore for a couple of days after bottling.
On Friday I bottled two batches, back to back. An English IPA that had been in primary for three weeks, the last two dry-hopped with Willamette, and an American wheat/rye summer ale that had been in primary for two weeks. I used an ice water bath (well, cooler) to try and cold-crash them a little for clarity. The gravity readings were the same as the ones I took a week or two back and the samples tasted good. The yeast I used in the wheat/rye seems to have brought out a little more "banana" than it did when used it for a wheat beer last year.
The actual filling and capping of the bottles isn't so bad, it's the cleaning and sanitizing that's a pain. I use larger bottles and do smaller batches so that I have less bottles to deal with, but even so I ended up clearning and sanitizing nearly 50 bottles. Cleaning should be a formality, because I always try to give the bottles a good hot rinse after being used. I'm a little anal, though, so I give them a good soak in a cleaning solution and a scrub with a bottle brush. Then they all have to cycle through sanitizer; just because it looks clean doesn't mean it's not contaminated with greedy microorganisms that want to muscle in on your yeast's territory.
Once you have everything sanitized, you can carry on to priming the beer and bottling it. After that, there's the cleanup. One smart-arse reply when somebody asks if you think they will enjoy homebrewing is to ask them if they enjoy doing the washing up. A large proportion of brewing is just trying to keep things clean. By the time I was done, I was pretty knackered. I flumphed on the couch and played Wii until it was past time to go to bed.
I'm hoping that the summer ale (provisionally titled "Reunion Ale" because it was brewed while Nora was out earning overtime at Reunion Weekend) at least will be good to go for Maine. I suspect that the IPA (I'll probably call it "India Ale" unless inspiration strikes me with its steely bat in the next few days) will take a little longer, since it came out quite strong. British Summertime, the English summer ale that I bottled a few weeks ago is coming into its own and the Spring Ale, which is down to a handful of bottles has matured into something really very good. My relatively furious brewing schedule has not yet produced the reserves of homebrew that I was hoping for, because its getting drunk quite quickly. I may have to up my batch size again.
We're prepping for our trip to Maine next week. We've been given the option of an extra day at the start, so we're going up on Friday. Nora's cousin will be house and Taz-sitting while we're gone. We're nervous about leaving Taz and we're going to miss him, but we're also excited about going away on our first real vacation for a while. I'm planning on hitting the Library this evening and leaving with an unfeasibly large pile of books.