In this latest update in the Brewology series, I will take you through the bottling process, which is arguably the simplest step in brewing your own beer, as I found out.  It also turns out to be a great way to gather friends together; what better way to promote bonding than by helping out with bottling some delicious home brewed beer?

After approximately a week in the secondary fermenter, the ESB was ready to take the leap into bottling.  The majority of time was spent with Shilling and myself doing our prep work, which meant sterilizing all of our equipment, bottles, etc. As a first-time homebrewer, I can tell you once again that cleaning and sterilization is going to be one of your main keys to getting the best tasting beer.  There are a lot of products available to aid in this process, and I’ll discuss them further on.  As a time-saving tip, I would recommend doing your cleaning and sterilization well ahead of time; you don’t want to spend hours cleaning bottles and gear when you were planning to start bottling early in the evening.  Needless to say, we found this out the hard way, as we started much later then we had planned.  But trial and error can lead to good lessons for future use.

We proceeded to siphon the brew into my bottling bucket from the glass carboy in order to filter out the last bit of sediment that was remaining.  After this, we simply took the priming sugar, which was dissolved in warm water, and slowly stirred it in the beer.  Again we started a siphon and were ready to begin bottling.  This went very quickly, as we started a DIY assembly line with myself filling bottles and Shilling capping them; it was as easy as that.  The brewing kit I purchased came with a large bag of caps and a dual lever capper, as well as the bottle filling attachment.

From start to finish, the bottling itself took about a half an hour, after which we stored the bottles away in cases and in a cool part of the house where they will be sitting for about another week to attain adequate carbonation.  Now we simply play the waiting game again, and we shall finally get to reap the benefits of all the hard work and enjoy a (hopefully) delicious ESB!

The rest of the Crew and a few friends will be having a BBQ to taste my brew, as well as my good friend Derek’s chocolate stout that is carbonating at the same time.  Next time I will be doing a quick review of the beers, as well as discussing recipes and equipment for future use as well.  So to my brothers and sisters of beer, I bid you farewell, until next time …

Prost!

— Cryptogrind