Bottling day finally arrives

So after 4 long weeks of waiting, it was finally time to bottle up the Bock that I had been fermenting. So early in the day I gathered up my bottling bucket, bottles, caps and transfer tubing and set about sanitizing them for the bottling later in the day. Then finally I decided that it was time to move the carboy of Bock out of the “lagering cellar” and into the kitchen where I usually bottle. Now this moment was a very exciting moment for me, I had kept the carboy covered for the last four weeks to prevent any light from getting in which could skunk up the beer, so I hadn’t seen this baby in 4 weeks, not once, not even to peek.

I slowly unwrapped the blanket that was covering it like a surgeon removing bandages. What was I going to find? A perfect looking beer with no trace of anything funky on the top or was I going to find a busted old pair of implants gone wrong and a beer that is misshapen like the worst pair of stripper implants you’ve ever seen. So, drum roll please………… Ta Da

It was a perfect carboy of beer. All of the sediment and spent yeast had fallen to the bottom to make a fine layer of cake, and the remaining yeast were still giving the beer just enough spritz so I know that the beers will be carbonated well in the bottle.

Now it came time to prime the beer into the bottling bucket. Because I don’t use CO2 and force carbonate my beer into kegs, I use corn sugar and bottle condition the beer. So every bottle basically ferments its own head in the bottle and you get a slight sediment in the bottle. But it seems that people are going more natural these days, so who cares if you drink a little yeast with your beer, you already eat it with your bread, right?

This is corn sugar, it looks like table sugar but is more fermentable and thus doesn’t sweeten the beer. The tube next to it contains a hyrdometer and it is used to measure potential alcohol. You fill the tube with the beer right before you start it fermenting and then you float the hydrometer in it. The hydrometer will float at a certain level and you read the level where the beer meets the hydrometer, then you ferment the beer and repeat the process before you add priming sugar. Now that you have the two readings, you subtract the final reading from the beginning reading, do a calculation and you know what your approximate alcohol is. That being said this Bock is about 5.5 – 6% alc/vol. Not bad I thought, that’s about where it should be. Now that the math is out of the way, I primed the beer with 3/4 cup of corn sugar to my 5 gallons of beer. That’s a pretty standard amount for priming. Now I could begin filling my bottles.

I use a spring loaded tip filler, as you place a bottle up onto the filler the bottom of the bottle forces the spring tip up and allows the beer to flow out and into the bottle. You release the pressure on the tip and the beer quits flowing, sounds like a few others things I know with tips and pressure, but I digress. So here we go.

I will typically bottle six bottles, then cap them, mix the bucket to make sure that the corn sugar is all dissolved and a little air at this point helps the sluggish yeast to liven up a little, then bottle another 6 bottles and so on and so forth until the beer is gone. The tedious part is capping. You have to place a cap on the bottle and then use a butterfly capper to crimp it on, if you don’t use enough pressure you don’t get a good seal and you have a flat beer, too much pressure and you crack the neck of the bottle and the beer is unusable unless you want a trip to the ER for ground glass in your stomach. But after awhile you get a good feel for it and a good rhythm working and you fly right through it.

In the starting position.

The cap is now crimped on.

Now the beer has been all bottled and capped and I greedily stare at my clutch of brown bottles. I have a case of beer, that’s all mine, all mine I tell you. Now I only have a case because I bottle in 20 ounce bottles instead of your normal 12 ounce longnecks.  I got a deal on cases of 20 oz bottles and hell if you’re going to have one beer, you know you’re going to have another, so why mess with opening two bottles when you can open one and be happy.

So, now the clock starts to tick again, it will be at least a week before I can taste any of these, but it will probably be more like two weeks. It takes a little while for the yeast to carbonate the beer, and I’m like any other man, I am more than willing to wait for fantastic head. So until then, pop a top and keep those mugs a’tippin’. Prost!!