Home Brew Talk - Bottling that first beer and lessons learned.

Tuesday 25th February marked 3 weeks from the moment i'd prepared my first brew for fermentation. According to the instructions on the kit that i was using, this was the time it was ready. So it was now time for me to bottle my beer ready for drinking.

I had had concerns previously that there wasn't enough carbonation in my beer and that previous attempts to add carbonation through the use of cO2 canisters had i thought proved unsuccessful. Firstly, by wasting on canister through testing how to use the cO2 tap and secondly by the pressure revealing a small imperfection in my barrel that allowed beer to run out until i released the pressure by unscrewing the lid of the barrel a bit. So i decided to give it one more try before bottling - reasoning that the pressure would be released by opening the tap on the barrel to fill my bottles.

In order to save a bit of money, i decided not to buy new bottles for use with my home brews, but rather had kept back empty bottles from beers i'd been drinking over the past few months. This means i have a variety of sizes and colours of bottles. In order to prepare the bottles for use - i steeped them once in the bath in really hot water to get the labels off, then before use steeped in the bath again with warm water and a few teaspoons of sterilising powder. This would cut down on the amount of bacterial contamination when bottling my beer.

It seemed to my bottling should be a straight forward process. Simply open the tap and pour straight in to the bottles - close the tap when nearly full then cap. I bought some crown caps and a capper from my trip to the brew store and this was a simple tool to use. You simply place your cap in the middle of the capper, where it is held in place with a magnet. You then place the cap over the top of your bottle and pull the two handles of the capper down until they are both down to 90 degree angles sideways sticking out from the central stem of the capper. This was a dawdle to use and only once did i slightly have the cap off centre and encounter difficulties (which just meant uncapping the bottle and trying again).

There was a slight problem when opening the tap on the barrel. Turns out the beer was very well carbonated (it turns out the sugar alone is enough to create carbonation) and when opening the tap it came out in a spraying motion (like if you drop a bottle of fizzy juice and it sprays everywhere) and this meant that i would need to use a funnel to gather all the liquid to trickle into the bottle. It also meant that as i filled the bottles there was a massive head building in the bottles - meaning it took several rounds of filling a bit at a time to fill the bottles. This was a pain but eventually i ended up with all my bottles filled and only a tiny bit of liquid with sediment left at the bottom of my barrel which i discarded.

I immediately opened one bottle to try one of my beers and was a little disappointed that it was very flat and it tasted not bad but a little tainted with a bitter after taste and had a cloudy appearance. Slightly disappointing but not unexpected given it was my first brew.

I have found that as i've left bottles lying in the spare room and drunk some a week later - a little carbonation has returned, suggesting theres still enough sugar in the beer to encourage carbonation after bottling. The beer has cleared as well and is tasting a lot less bitter.

So what have a i learned from my first brew.

1. Take measurements of the specific gravity of the brew before and after fermentation to be able to gauge ABV, as i've no idea of the alcohol content of my first brew because i took no initial measurement.

2. Bottle condition rather than barrel condition. I'll use my barrel for a secondary fermentation now and add sugar only just before bottling to ensure that carbonation occurs in the bottle so that when i drink one it develops a head as expected and is as refreshing as i'd like.

3. Don't bother with cO2 canisters. Sugar is enough to carbonate and with my barrel it just causes problems.

4. Give it more time. It seems the more time you give beer the better it becomes (obvious i know but difficult giving the eagerness to try it).

5. More sterilisation of equipment to ensure the beer is not tainted. I think being slightly lax is what as accounted for the bitter taste of my beer.

I look forward to applying these lessons learnt to processing my second brew which early signs suggest is progressing well, smelling exactly as a Hefeweizen should and tasting (i had a swig of the sample i used to measure gravity) well balanced. I'll discuss how i approached my first part mash brew in next weeks Home Brew Talk