First Home Brew - Part II

Its time to bottle my first batch of brew. On Friday it had been it fermenting for 10 days. First I got all the bottles together and rinsed them out. Since I had two gallons of beer to bottle, I gathered up all the bottles I could. If I was going to use glass bottles, I would have to get metal lids and a capper. I'll get that stuff eventually, but this time I'm just going to use old soda bottles. The instructions say this is okay. In order to test if the beer is ready to bottle the instructions say, "Taste it. If it tastes like flat beer, then its ready to bottle. If its sweet, let it ferment longer." I tasted it and it definateley tasted like room-temperature flat beer.

The first step is to sanitize the bottles, this is done by putting the rest of the no-rinse power in a 1 gallon container and mixing it with warm water. Then you fill all the containers half way, shake them up, and let them sit a while.

After you drain the bottles, you put a measured amount of sugar in each bottle. This is what will make the beer sweeter and cause it to carbonate.

Then you fill each bottle almost all the way full using the tap from the fermenter.

Then you screw on the caps (provided) and turn it over a few times to make sure all the sugar dissolves.


Viola! I have two gallons of beer. Its actually pretty clear. The instructions said that there might be some sediment in it from the yeast, but i didn't see any of that. Below you can see the writing on the opposite side of the bottle and my fingers.

Now I have to condition the bottles. Now I just have to set them somewhere out of the sunlight at room0temperature for a week. I chose the bottom of the pantry. In a week they will be carbonated, and I'll put them in the fridge to cool.

Waiting is the hardest part.