Learn to Brew - Part III

Learn to Brew! 

This is the third in a series of posts on how to get started homebrewing. Click for Part I, Part II.

Part III: Bottle Your Beer

So it’s been a couple of weeks, and now this is it. The final push before you can sit back, crack a homebrew, and enjoy the fruits of your labor. The bottling process is a bit time consuming, but not nearly as long as brewday. Without further ado, let’s get this thing bottled so you can drink it soon!

Gather the Bottles: A 5-gallon batch yields about 48 12-oz bottles worth of beer. I usually keep a few extras on hand, just in case. You can also use growlers or 22 oz bombers, but just make sure you’ve got enough to fit the total volume.

Clean the Bottles: A bottling brush is a good tool to have on hand for this process. You’ll want to make sure each bottle is free of any kind of solids or buildup on the bottom, and just generally looks clean when you hold it up to the light.

Prepare Priming Solution: This is a solution of sugar and water that gives the yeast a little extra food to eat when it’s in the bottle. This allows it to produce more CO2, which gets dissolved in your beer and makes it fizzy. A couple of different priming options are table sugar, corn sugar, or dry malt extract. I usually use about 5/8 cup of table sugar dissolved in 2 cups of water, but there are several different calculators out there if you want to tweak your carbonation levels.

Sanitize the Bottles: Filling your bottling bucket with sanitizer solution works just fine for this process. You just have to sanitize the bottles in waves, depending on the solution’s time requirement. Another neat trick if you plan far enough in advance is to put all of the bottles in the dishwasher for a sanitize cycle.

Sanitize Everything Else: After you get the bottles drying, go ahead and throw the rest of your bottling equipment in. You’ll need to sanitize anything that comes in contact with the beer, so:

Bottling Bucket 

Racking Cane/Auto-Siphon 

Hydrometer 

Plastic Tubing 

Bottling Wand 

Bottle Caps 

Also, you can run a little bit of the solution through the spigot to make sure everything in that assembly gets sanitized.

Measure Final Gravity: Use the hydrometer to get the final gravity. If it is significantly higher than expected based on the recipe, it might be worthwhile to let it sit for a few more days. But if it is ready to rock, use your original gravity from brew day and your final gravity to calculate your %ABV.

Rack Beer to Bottling Bucket: Take the lid off of the primary fermentor, insert your sanitized racking cane, and attach the plastic tubing to the top of the cane. At this point, you’ll need to dump the sanitizer solution out of the bottling bucket. Feel free to go ahead and dump the sugar water solution into the bottom of the bottling bucket. If using Starsan don’t worry if there is a little foam left behind. Start a siphon and allow it to run in to the bottling bucket (creating as little bubbles/splashing as possible). Once you get down to the trub (the gunk at the bottom of the bucket), go ahead and stop the siphon. If you forgot to add the sugar solution it’s ok to add it now, but give the beer a little stir to help ensure there is a little sugar for every bottle.

Bottle It, Cap It: There are a few different setups for adding the primed beer to the bottles that work fine. I prefer to cut a small piece of your plastic hose and use that as an adapter to attach the bottling wand to the spigot. You’ll have to hang this part over the counter, but it works great. Open the valve on the spigot and the valve at the tip of the wand will stop the flow. Next, grab your first bottle, insert the wand into the bottom, and press the bottle upward to release the valve and allow the beer to flow in. Fill each bottle up to a couple inches below the top, and then you’re ready to cap it.

It’s up to you to find your system of bottling and capping. Some like to fill all the bottles, and cap them all at once, some like to fill and cap one at a time, some do a few at a time, and some use the buddy system. Find what works for you! (Hint: If you open the dishwasher, and set up your bottling bucket above it, the dishwasher door works great as a drip tray.)

Wait: I know, I know, you just waited two weeks. Well, give it one or two more. I've found the minimum conditioning time is about a week, but waiting two weeks all but guarantees that your beer will be ready to imbibe. If you crack open the first one and it’s a little flat, just give it another week and see what happens. Beer does have a shelf life, but it also takes time for the flavors to get to know each other, so feel free to keep a few on the shelf for a few months and see how the flavor develops.

And with that, you are a bona fide homebrewer! Cheers to you and your first hand-crafted pint! Feel free to send us an email, tweet or whatever and let us know how it turned out. And check back for later posts on upgrades that you can add to your setup over time that will make the process even smoother and easier.