It has been more than a couple of weeks since I started my brewing, so I was getting more than antsy to get this stuff bottled. The only thing that was keeping that from happening was - BOTTLES. I knew I'd need them. I knew it from the very beginning. What do you drink beer out of? Bottles. I had purchased a few small 12 oz. bottles several weeks ago, because they were kinda cute, but this wasn't going to be near enough for the two gallons of ale beckoning the fruition of my labor. I thought about stealing the now empty 1 quart bottles from my husband's beer making kit, but those bottles seemed so...ordinary. And plastic. And too large. Hardly worthy of my inaugural beer. Not fancy enough for the "Taste of the Blues". Oh no, I needed something MORE.
So, I set back off to the local supply store. Lucky for me, I live within about a mile from one of the very few beer/wine supply stores in our fair city. I knew as soon as I laid eyes on the bottling section which bottles were coming home with me. There they were
, those glorious Amber colored, 16 oz., swing-top bottles. The neck is rather bulbous. Perfect! I gathered up a case of these (after careful calculation as to how many I'd need) and headed home. I had two gallons of brew. That's 256 oz. My case of 16 oz. bottles would take up 192 oz. That leaves 64 oz. I'd get to use those cute 12 oz. bottles so nothing goes to waste. Of course, this was all meticulously calculated previously. Along with the cute 12 oz. bottles, I had also purchased a nifty capping gadget. (I've been a lover of gadgetry since I was a mere tot.) As long as you have a legitimate reason for gadgetry, it's always appropriate to purchase said gadgetry without otherwise having to justify the expense.Now that I had enough bottles, I returned to my handy and entirely thorough instructions from the Mr. Beer kit. This is Step 3 - Bottling & Carbonating. It said my beer was ready to be bottled when the liquid in my keg was relatively clear and no longer cloudy. As it turns out, my beer still seemed cloudy to me. I wasn't dissuaded from my task. I reasoned that since I had pulverized a bunch of blueberries and added honey, that this concoction couldn't help but be somewhat cloudy. I pressed on. I followed the steps to sanitize everything. Can't be too careful in this step. (I read something about exploding bottles if you don't follow this step correctly.)
Before my beer making days, I never really gave much thought to carbonation. I mean, I understand that soft drinks are carbonated and that's what makes them bubbly, but I never considered that beer was also carbonated. It makes perfect sense, of course, but I just never gave it any thought before. (If you're reading this out of order, you may not know that I was not previously a beer drinker until I became a beer brewer.) So, this fermented brew that was sitting in my keg needed some carbonation. This happens by putting sugar in the bottles before adding the liquid. Just regular old white granulated sugar. Mr. Beer thought of everything, so he assumed some people (like me) might not be satisfied with the pre-packaged plastic bottles that came with his kit. He gave sugar measurements for all different sizes of bottles - 3/4 tsp. for my cute little 12 oz. bottles and 1 tsp. for the awesome 16 oz. swing-top bottles. I filled each bottle with the appropriate amount of sugar and brew and capped them off. I placed all the bottles out of direct sunlight as directed. It is night-time, so there's no sun at all. But, being that I plan ahead...I made sure that when the sun does come back out, that it will not shine directly on those bottles.
My husband is a big fan of my blog, and he was trying to assist me in my endeavor (bless his heart). He thought I should write something about what I'll do now that my beer is bottled. What else can I do? I'll wait.
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