It’s about three weeks ago now that I began brewing my first batch of beer, which meant yesterday was the bottling day. I spent my morning prepping by watching instructional videos on the internet and finally got everything ready to start bottling.
If you’ve never brewed beer before and are considering doing so, let me just warn you that the bottling part isn’t easy. You have to siphon the beer from the jug to a pot or bucket, and then again from the pot/bucket to the bottles. To siphon, you have to fill the tube with sanitized water, making sure to cover both ends. Then you have to attach a rod to one end of the tube, place the rod in the jug, and the other end of the tube over a cup. The idea is that once you uncover the end of the tube, the water flowing out will work as a sort of suction to suck the beer out through the rod and tube. So once the water finishes flowing into the cup, you move the tube over the pot/bucket for the beer to flow into. For some reason or another, it just wasn’t making a strong enough suction to get the beer flowing. It took me quite a bit of time and a very messy kitchen to get the beer to siphon correctly, but after about 10 tries it did finally work out all right.
Before bottling. I used Grolsch bottles since they have swing-tops and are easily re-sealable.
My empty jug, post-siphoning. I was hoping to get a picture of the actual siphoning process, but I unfortunately only have so many hands.
My full bottles of Oak Aged IPA, now being stored away for 2-3 more weeks before they are drink-ready. I ended of using 7 or the 9 bottles I had available.
Trevor
