So after weeks of waiting, running back to the closet to check on the secondary fermentary container the time finally came to bottle the beer.
This is the beer immediately before bottling. Notice the brown color has not faded but more importantly notice the layer of sediment at the bottom. This is the remaining yeast that did not get used up in the process of fermentation. If my father had a mind to do it he could have saved this sediment and used it in a second brew. Over time this gives the beer its own unique flavor. My father says it's not really worth saving until you know what you're doing. I guess he has a point, we haven't tasted the beer yet but if it turns out to be terrible we certainly don't want any record of it (not that any exists...).
Before the beer itself could be bottled we needed to add the priming sugar in order to induce carbonation. This required creating a special syrup using a small portion of the beer. My father demonstrates.
The syrup makes cool patterns but I couldn't really get a good shot of them.
The syrup is pretty standard as far as syrups go. You add the sugar, heat up the mixture and allow all the sugar to dissolve. Though the beer's yeast is largely inactive at the bottom and for the most part it is completely fermented, the beer is still very sensitive. Therefore it is very important to make sure that you let the syrup cool down significantly.
Once the syrup is ready you can mix it back in with the rest of the beer. After stirring vigorously you can begin bottling.
This is the equipment we will be using to bottle the beer. The beer capper is a pain in the ass to use because it is old and I remember once when I was about six I cut myself really badly on it. It was one of my favorite toys as a child. I never knew what it was until today.
These are the bottle caps we used, notice how flat it is. Apparently we are making real beer.
Before you actually begin the bottling process, you should get the beer out of the secondary fermentator for hygienic purposes.
I just realized how long this post is.
I will continue again in another post.
