Thirsty Thursday – Bottling Day!

It’s been an exciting week in Brewville (AKA my house). For the first time, I have bottled my own beer.

This was not without its problems. I definitely shot beer at myself, and made a rather sticky spot on the floor, but it’s bottled.

I had meant to do the bottling on Sunday, but I wound up spending the entire day doing nothing but cleaning bottles.

I did finally get them all clean, but it was the next day before I attempted the bottling.

First comes sanitizing everything.

Sugar has to be dissolved into water to be added to the brand new beer before bottling. This is food for the yeast that’s still in there doing yeast-y things. The yeast will gobble up the sugar and carbonate the beer.

Then, the beer gets siphoned out of the glass carboy into a bucket for filling. The sugar-water mixture is already at the bottom of the bucket.

I didn’t take any photos of the filling part. I had my hands full then. That’s when I shot myself with beer.

Ultimately, I filled 42 bottles with beer. That’s seven 6-packs worth. At 8 dollars a 6-pack (a low end price for higher-end beers), it’s worth about $56. This kit to buy is about $25. I think we got a good return for our investment.

The only down side is that it’s possible that we’ve made a pretty weak beer. By my calculations it’s only about 2.3% alcohol by volume. Maybe I read the hydrometer wrong. I don’t know. As long as it tastes good, I don’t really care. But we have to wait two weeks before trying it.

I’ll let you know how it comes out!