Opawa Home Brewing

Bottling

2009-08-11T00:19:00.000-07:00

On Saturday I finally got around to bottling the brew. The first step is to wash 2 dozen 750 ml bottles and 1/2 dozen 500 ml ex Emersons bottles, in total 30 dead soldiers. I give them a soak in a detergent based sterilizing agent, then a scrub with a bottle brush followed by rinse with cold water.

Scrubbing out the bottles.

Bottles ready to go.

Next I checked the specific gravity again it was 1.010 this gives an approximate alcohol content of 4.7 %. The brew should brew out a little more in the bottle, so for interest I will recheck this at a later date.

Measuring the specific gravity using the hydrometer

After the washing has been completed you need to add sugar so that the yeast, still alive in beer, will consume this and poo out ethanol and CO2. The CO2 is the by product we need to carbonate the beer and generate some nice frothy head.

Adding 1 teaspoon of dextrose sugar to each bottle

Next it is time to fill the bottles, to do this I attach a bottle filler to the brew bucket. The filler consists of a valve on the end of a hard tube. The valve opens when the base of the bottle presses on the on valve and allows the beer to fill the bottle. This serves two purposes, one, it makes filling the bottles easier and more importantly the second purpose is to prevent oxidization of the beer as this can cause unwanted flavours.

The brew bucket with the bottle filler attached.

Next is capping the full bottles. This is done using a crown cap and capping tool.

Before

During

After

Ahh! 30 reanimated soldiers

Finally, for the secondary ferment to happen, the fill bottles are placed some where warm for 5 to 7 days, following this they are stored somewhere dark and cool. After about 2 weeks they ready to taste. Saying this the longer they are left, theoretically, the better they taste, mind you, this part of the process has caused me some problems in the past.

Specific Gravity Check

2009-08-05T00:45:00.000-07:00

Checked the specific gravity tonight and it is 1.013.

Approximate Alcohol Content (%) = Starting S.G. - Ending S.G. / 0.0074

= 1.045 - 1.013 / 0.0074

= 4.3%

Its probably got a bit more brewing to do yet, I'll give it another 3 days so maybe it will get to 5%.

My First Attempt at an Extract Brew

2009-08-02T01:15:00.000-07:00

My home brewing to date had been using kits purchased at the supermarket. This had produced drinkable but not great results. Also I wanted to achieve a much more hoppier tasting beer, something akin to my currently preferred drop Emersons 1812 IPA.

After some googling, I noticed that in the US home brewers did extract brewing, this is reportedly to be almost as good as full brews. Instead of using a kit that contains pre-hopped malt you use liquid and dry malt extracts to which you may add some speciality malts and your own combinations of hops.

With this in mind, I have attempted a bastardised extract brew using two Coppers Draught (pre-hopped) Beer Kits for the malt which I boiled up and added my own hops to make, hopefully, a bitter Ale with a strong hop flavour, equally it may turn out to be shit.

I found a recipe on the net and headed of to my local brew shop to buy some hops. The bittering hop specified in the recipe was Galena and was not stocked, therefore I bought a New Zealand Green Bullet hop which had a similar alpha acid percentage. The aromatic hop I bought was New Zealand Fuggles.

So last night I took the plunge and did my first boil up, the pictures below show a few of the steps in the process.

This is the beginning of the 60 minute boil with one of the tins of malt and 2 oz of the NZ Green Bullet hops.

Weighing the aromatic hops - 1.5 oz of NZ Fuggles these where added just five minutes before the completion of the boil.

On completion of the boil it is necessary to drop the temperature of the wort as quickly as possible. I did this in my bath tub, of interest here, is that the temperature of the water out of the tap was 9 degrees C, after one hour the temperature in the pot was 23 degrees and the bath water had risen to 20 degrees C. After the temperature had dropped to 23 C I poured the wort into my brew bucket and added the yeast. Time to let those little microbes make ethanol.

I measured the specific gravity of the wort which was 1045. Measuring the specific gravity on the completion of the brewing allows the final alcohol content to be calculated. I also had a wee taste of the wort and it was noticably more bitter than the previous worts I had tasted. That is a good thing I hope.

The brew bucket nested away in the brew box, note the 40 W bulb used as a heater, an eco bulb is no use to me here. The bulb is thermostatically controlled and you can see the temperature logger sitting on the brew bucket lid, the probe is taped to the side of the bucket.

The graph of the temperature of the wort for the last 24 hours.

I will let this brew for approximately a week. Then bottle.