Bottling Bitter take two

Over all the bottling was a success! The only issue that I can think of off hand was that the gravity was still a little high at 1.010. I didn't want to wait any longer and wouldn't have the time during the week for a bottling, so today had to be the day. I just hope that it doesn't cause any bottle bomb issues, but considering that the ginger beer seems to be doing ok I don't think that it'll be an issue.

I boiled around 200ml of water and added 160g of cane sugar and poured it into one of the 23L carboys I picked up a little while back. I then pumped the finished wort into the carboy, mixing the wort with the priming solution. After I finished filling the bottles I cleaned out the pail and carboy, giving the bottles a chance to start to carb and push out all the oxygen that would have been on top of the wort. Next I capped them and put them up on a dresser in me basement. I figure that I'll leave them up there for about a week and then put them on the cooler floor. And then into the fridge some time before drinking them. I plan to crack some open on the 3rd to taste. Also, see below for pictures! And it came out to 45 500ml bottles.

EDIT: And that's everything, I'm all caught up now. Everything from this point onwards will be fresh and new. 

08/06/2010 Munton's Premium Bitter take two

That's right take two, didn't make any mistakes this time (third times the charm eh?) and used the plastic pail. Which is funny because I found it easier to clean and use then the glass carboy. Maybe if I can find a source I'll switch over to the clear plastic better bottles.

Even though I didn't over water this time the gravity was still a little short at 1.038. I pitched in another 100g of sugar to try and up it the last two points. Another thing was since I didn't want to spend money again on spring water I ended up just filling the empty containers from the previous attempt with tap water and leaving them over night for the chlorine to evaporate.

I went to bottle it last night and was in for some disappointment. The gravity 1.012 when it needed to be 1.008... Since I'm still new to this I didn't want to take the chance with bottle bombs and so left it for tomorrow. I'm not going to have time during the week, so for better or worse it's going into the bottles tomorrow.

08/03/10 Munton's Premium Bitter

Ok, so lacking the proper equipment and a grain source for all grain brewing I decided to try another extract kit. This time I went with Munton's Premium Bitter and enlisted the aid of a friend to help things go smoothly.

Which didn't really help... it seems that I had forgotten that the 1.5L of the kit threw off the total amount of water and we ended up using too much again :(. At the time I worked through the water math a few times to make sure that I didn't screw it up and I forgot about the bloody kit again... gah. This time I was also using the glass carboy that I got with the kit. I wanted to watch the beer brewing instead of trying to peer through a translucent plastic pail.

As a fix for the extra water we decided to add some more sugar to the mix. The gravity came out to about 1.034ish and we added another 150g of sugar to try and raise it. The kit mentioned 1.040 in the instructions, but we only got up to 1.036 with the addition of the sugar :P

I figured that it was going to blow over when the yeast started, so we placed it into the plastic pale to catch the overflow. The pail ended up being a good idea for catching the overflow, when I came down the next morning there was tons of foamy yeast sitting on top of the carboy and some wort in the bottom of the pail. The bad part of using the pail was taking the carboy out to clean off the overflow. It slipped out of my hands as I was setting it down... glass and concrete don't really like each other so it's a good idea to prevent the two from meeting in any sort of impact...

Several hours later with some cussing, some lacerations, some pumping, some moping and some more cussing I had manged to clean up the mess of 24L of glass shard infested wort. During the process I had somehow manged to misplace the sediment trap for the pump as well as hit my head on just about every low lying beam, air duct or light bulb in the basement as well as get soaked by the insolent pump (with beer and water) whenever I pumped too hard...

Suffice to say I shall no longer be using glass for primary fermentation for anything over a gallon.

6/13/10 Munton's Pale Ale

For my very first home brew I decided to keep it simple and just do a full extract premade brew kit. It shouldn't have been hard right? Just boil some water, add some sugar and wort, air lock it off, wait, bottle, wait and then drink. In some ways it was that easy, in other ways it sure as hell wasn't.

And the largest lesson that I learned from this attempt is that it is a good idea to have the right equipment to do the job. And that just because you waltz into a supply store and buy a brewing kit and the extract kit doesn't mean that you will have everything you need to do the job.

What I had from the two kits:
Brew Kit:
25L plastic bucket
24L glass carboy
carboy brush
hand pump siphon and tube
sanitizer
hydrometer
plastic spoon

Extract Kit:
Munton's Pale Ale kit (for 23L)
Hopped Wort in a can
Dried yeast

I had also purchased a book on home brewing that provided a good intro and revised instructions as opposed to those that came with the extract kit.

Missing from the list above are a few things that I've since picked up, and a few more that I still need to... (I might have missed some things below. If I remember anything else I'll add them later)

First and foremost would be the electronic scale for measuring the dextrose to be added to the kit. Not having one I found somewhere on line that a cup of sugar weighs around 190g and used 5ish cups in placed of the 1kg that was needed... Looking back on the ABV it's a pretty solid fact that I didn't add nearly enough to the wort. But I was impatient and thought that I could get away from it. I managed to find one on sale for $14.

Next up was an easy fix, I didn't have anything that allowed an easy removal of some wort for testing the OG. This was remedied by a turkey baster.

A thermometer would have also been nice, that way when I rehydrated and pitched the yeast I would have been able to make sure that the water/wort was the right temperature. This is something that I'm still missing and have been using a candy thermometer as a bad replacement (it only goes down to 40c...)

Onto the brewing, I mixed some boiling water with the wort in the 25L plastic bucket and then added the dextrose. Not having access to a large pot to boil the water in I got an 18L bottle of spring water from the grocery store and then boiled 5L of tap water. I added everything and wondered why I had 24.5L instead of the 23L the kit should have been. I didn't realize that the kit was 1.5L itself and put me over the intended water amount. >.<

6/22/10

Bottling was pretty easy, and I don't really have anything special to mention about it. It took me about 3.5 – 4 hours to do, and even then I wasted (not really wasted) a bunch of time making sure that they were properly sanitized. I ended up leaving it in the bucket for 9 days. I wanted it out sooner, but time and lack of caps pushed it back later. Also due to all the extra water I added I ended up with 49.5 500ML Pet bottles. Which makes sense because of the 1.5L from the kit and 1.5 from the priming solution (See below).

Since I over watered and under sugared it the batch came out to a whopping 1.030 SG on the hydrometer. And with the FG of 1.008 the beer clocked in just under 3% at 2.88% ABV. At least, that was what it was at before I primed it with 1.5L of water and 10 tablespoons of dextrose... Once again having an electronic scale would have been handy. The beer came out weak and under carbed. But it still made for a refreshing beverage and maybe somewhat of a session beer.