Bottling My Home Brew
Tuesday, February 12th, 2008Well, the day finally came. I was supposed to wait between four and seven days for the fermentation to stop with my home brew. It’s day seven and it just about stopped. How do I know it stopped? Well, the bubbles became few and far between. Also, the hydrometer reading was between 1.008 and 1.010. That’s the ideal reading for home brew with the type of sugar I used. If I had used regular white sugar, I would’ve had to have a reading of less than 1.006. Why did it take the full seven days? Because the temperature wasn’t as warm as I would’ve liked. The warmer the temperature, the faster the fermentation.
This is a photo of the hydrometer at work. It’s hard to tell the reading, but it’s about 1.009. After I found out that the brew was ready to be bottled, I had to add the carbonation drops to each bottle. All carbonation drops are is sugar balls. You can use regular sugar or these types of drops. The company that made the brew kit likes to make things easy for you. I had thirty 740ml bottles, so each bottle took two carbonation drops.
This is the adhesive thermometer. This tells me that the temperature is OK to bottle. The only reason the temperature is this high is because I had the tub sitting in front of the pellet stove. It’s hard to keep it this warm in the Winter.
This is what you call a “little bottler.” It helps to bottle the beer. You don’t really need one of these, but I guess it does help not make too much of a mess. It sticks right in the tap. Also, it’s imperative that you have a tablecloth like this. It helps with the bottling.
Me starting to bottle…
…and me bottling.
This is a photo of all thirty bottles full of beer. I have to wait another seven days with the bottles at 21C-27C and then another seven days at room temperature. I can then drink them. They say that if I wait up to three months, the flavor will get better and the bubbles will get smaller. We’ll see.
