Is it infected?

No, I'm not talking about the hangnail on your big toe, I'm talking about your beer.

Nearly every new homebrewer I've ever talked with thinks their first beer is infected.  They taste their beer after it's been fermenting a few days, it tastes a little weird to them because they've never tasted such young beer before, and immediately assume something has gone wrong.

 I think this fear is perpetrated, in large part, by experienced homebrewers stressing the importance of cleaning and proper sanitation.  New homebrewers read about the horrors of failing to properly sanitize, and see all the ways the beer can go wrong, and assume that because they've never done this before, they've screwed something up and it's infected.

The truth is, it's actually pretty difficult to unintentionally infect your beer.  Yeast doesn't play very nicely with other microbes.  It eats all the good food and then poisons its environment by giving off alcohol as a waste product, and you're throwing massive amounts of yeast into your wort.  Very few microbes can amicably survive alongside yeast, and those microbes, while they may make the beer taste funky, can't hurt you.

How can you tell if your beer is actually infected?
One of the easiest ways is to taste the beer, but this doesn't work very well if you're a new brewer.  New homebrewers don't actually know what young beer should taste like, and chances are they've underpitched their yeast, haven't properly aerated, and possibly did a poor job of cooling the wort, all of which will give their beer off flavors, but don't mean their beer is infected.

Another way is to look at the beer in the fermenter.  Does it have a thick, white or tan, frothy head?  That's a good thing, probably not infected (a thin head is fine too.)  Does it have what looks like huge soap bubbles that have been sitting there for days?  OK, that might mean it's infected.  Does it have a very thin, milky looking skin over the top?  Yeah, that's probably infected.

Another great way to tell whether or not it's infected is to take gravity readings.  Has the gravity stopped dropping?  Is it reasonably close to where you expected your final gravity to be?  Then it's probably not infected.  If your final gravity is significantly lower than you expected it to be, you might have an infection.  If your final gravity is significantly higher than you expected, you probably just messed something else up, but don't have an infection (and the beer will be fine, just a little sweeter than you'd planned on it being.)

If you think you have an infection, take a picture and show a more experienced homebrewer.  They'll likely be more than happy to assure you whether or not you have an infection (although, even experienced homebrewers don't know everything, I actually ended up taking a picture of one of my recent beers and asked people whether or not they thought it was infected because, while it didn't really look infected to me, it looked pretty weird.  I'm still pretty sure it's not infected.)

Another great way to go is, once you're sure it's done fermenting and the gravity isn't going any lower, even if you think it's infected, go ahead and bottle the beer and let it bottle condition for a while.  Some infections can actually lend an interesting character to the beer.

If you do bottle an infected beer, you might want to put it in a closed box of some sort in case you accidentally end up with bottle bombs though, and if you open a bottle and it starts gushing everywhere, you might want to think about opening the rest of the bottles to at least let the excess CO2 out so you don't end up with bottle bombs.

Mr. Beer - Yea or Nay?

Invariable, when anyone decides to try brewing their own beer, they will eventually come across the Mr. Beer kit.  The kit comes with everything you need to brew your first beer for $40, which gives you 2 gallons of finished beer.  A much easier amount to handle than the 5 gallon recipes that are typical in this hobby.  For an extra $15 you also get everything you need to bottle your beer.

So what's not to love?

While the initial cost if the Mr. Beer kit is low, the ingredient kits are fairly expensive, starting around $15 for a 2 gallon batch.  For not much more money, you could be making 5 gallon batches of beer.

The ingredient kits are made in such a way that you can't easily experiment with the recipes.  The kits are typically a can of hopped malt extract, some dry yeast and cleaner.  Because the extract is already hopped, you're limited in the ways you can experiment with different hops.  Sure, you can try dry hopping, or adding additional hops at different parts of the boil, but you can't get any less hoppy, or try different bittering hops.  Also, the extract that comes with the Mr. Beer kits don't really let you play with different specialty grains, because the flavor/color of the specialty grains has already been added to the kits.  

Now, for the yeast, sure, the yeast that comes with the ingredient kits is likely fairly neutral, but you could try buying different yeasts.  Then again, buying different yeast will run you an extra $5 from most suppliers.

I've also never been terribly impressed with the flavor of the beers that are made from the Mr. Beer kits, but a large part of that could come from the person brewing the beer being very new to the hobby, and not brewing the beer in ideal conditions.

But wait, there are redeeming qualities!

The Mr. Beer kit isn't all bad though.  It is a relatively inexpensive, easily approachable way to get into the hobby, and anything that promotes the hobby is good, in my book. 

I know several people that got their start in homebrewing from a Mr. Beer kit they received as a gift, or decided to buy on their own.  I also know a lot of people that have been scared away from the hobby because of how terrible their beer ended up tasting, but I'm guessing they either messed up somewhere, or just don't care for the type of beer they made.  I'm also pretty confident that the people that were scared away from homebrewing because of the beer they made with a Mr. Beer kit, are the same type of people that wouldn't have lasted very long in the hobby to begin with.

I also have a friend that still uses his Mr. Beer kit to brew experimental batches of beer, now that he's moved on to brewing larger scale batches of beer.

Final notes

If you're thinking about getting into homebrewing, I'd suggest finding someone that already homebrews, and ask to help them brew a batch of beer.  I've had people ask me that a few times now, and sometimes they go on to start brewing, and sometimes they decide they'd rather drink my beer than make their own.

If someone bought you a Mr. Beer kit, and it hasn't been sitting around, unused, for too long, give it a try.  Even if you don't end up liking the beer you make, it'll at least give you an idea as to what is involved in brewing beer, and whether or not you'd like to pursue the hobby further.

Wild Rice Brown Ale Recipe

I Brewed a Wild Rice Brown Ale back on the 17th, a little over 2 weeks ago.  I moved it to secondary tonight, not because it needs to secondary, but because I needed the primary fermenter, and I'm not quite ready to keg it yet (I need to clean some kegs.)

I stole a little sample, and it tasted pretty damned good.  My wife and I are really excited about it.  I can't really give you full tasting notes because the beer was warm, uncarbonated and a little young, but it's definitely inline with what I'm going for, which is a slightly roasty brown ale with some of the nutty flavor from the wild rice.  My friends don't seem to taste what I'm tasting when I drink wild rice beers, but I think the wild rice lends sort of a cross between a nutty flavor, and a very slight hint of concord grapes.  I realize it's an odd description, but it's actually quite pleasant.

For those of you unfamiliar with wild rice, wild rice is not actually rice, it's the seed of an aquatic grass native to the midwestern US.  If it's not locally available to you, you can get some here: Wild Rice

Along with being my first time brewing with Wild Rice, this was also the first all-grain beer I've ever brewed, which was further complicated by needing to do a cereal mash as a part of the brew, which added quite a bit of time and complexity to the brew.

The recipe is entirely my own invention, with some help from this Brew Your Own article and Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels.  I also got some help from the fine folks at The Four Firkins in figuring out how much wild rice to actually add.  They tracked down the amount of wild rice used in Schell's Wild Rice Farmhouse Ale. 

Wild Rice Brown Ale - All-Grain - 5 Gallon Batch

Brewed 7-17-2012

8 lbs. Briess 2-Row

2.8 lbs. Wild Rice

1.6 lbs. Briess Caramel 60L

0.4 lbs. Briess Chocolate Malt

0.2 lbs. Briess Roast Malt

1 oz. Kent Goldings 5.6%AAU (60 min.)

1 oz. Kent Goldings 5.6%AAU (30 min.)

0.5 oz. Fuggles 4.3% AAU (5 min.)

Wyeast 1335 British Ale II

The wild rice isn't malted, so you'll need to do a cereal mash to unlock the starches.

To do the cereal mash, mix the wild rice and 0.5 lbs of the 2-row with about 10 qt. of water.  Heat this in a pot to 155ºf and hold it at that temperature for about 20 minutes.  Then bring it to a boil for about 60 minutes.  After 60 minutes, the water should be thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. You will need to be pretty diligent in stirring the cereal mash during the boil to keep the wild rice from burning to the bottom of the pot.

Once the cereal mash is done, add it to your main mash.  I was targeting 152ºf for my main mash, I actually ended up at about 148ºf, but had some boiling water waiting just in case and ended up at 153ºf.

I tried to crush my wild rice, but wasn't able to do so.  I don't have a mill, so I was trying some other methods, and nothing worked.  In the end, I don't think it mattered as my mash efficiency ended up at 78%.

Surly SŸX

When I started this blog about a month and a half ago, I said I would also talk about craft beer.  Up until now, I've been fairly quiet on the subject.  Today, that will change.

Surly SŸX is Surly Brewing Co.'s sixth anniversary beer.  The description from the label reads:

Woah. Who would have thought? Another great year flew by, bringing us to the big SŸX. What better way to celebrate than to challenge ourselves with unfamiliar techniques and materials? Utilizing six wood species in a 'Honey Comb' shape for aging this year's anniversary beer. SŸX comes in at Alc. 15% by Vol. and is one to be savored with it's pale gold color, dry toffee and fruit character and warming afterglow finish.

Todd Haug

Last Monday morning, at about 10:30am, The Four Firkins announced the arrival of Surly SŸX at their store.  I got there at around 3:30pm, and they had already been sold out for two hours.  I then contacted Surdyk's, and they informed me they wouldn't be getting their delivery until Wednesday.  I took my chances and just showed up at about 2:30pm, but didn't find a single bottle in my mad dash through the store.  On my way out, I asked an employee, and they confided in me that the beer had been tucked into an odd, out of the way corner, in an attempt to waylay the anticipated horde of people that would be seeking out the elusive beer.

I was led back to the location of the corner where the beer had been hidden and was told "there is no limit on the number you may purchase".  I was tempted to purchase an entire case, but at $20 a bottle, I restrained myself to purchasing only four bottles.  They were still cold, so despite the heat outside, they arrived at my destination at well below 70۫f.

I managed to keep myself from immediately opening a bottle, and waited until Friday, when my wife and I would have time to actually take our time with the beer and savor it properly.

After a nice, relaxing dinner, we came home and opened the bottle.  I was immediately hit by the strong, flowery smell of the hops.  I poured the beer into two glasses.  The beer was far too cold to begin with, and the only odor was a very flowery hop character.  The flavor was sweet, almost on the edge of cloying, but the strong hop flavor kept it just bitter enough to keep from being too sweet.

There was definitely a strong alcohol flavor to it, and the beer was too strong in general to drink quickly.  This was actually quite beneficial, because we were able to experience the way the flavor changed over about three hours.

As the beer warmed, the sweet flavor became more complex, and the alcohol flavor faded away.  The flowery hops were present throughout the entire session, but helped to compliment the malty flavor well as the beer grew closer to room temperature.  Eventually, the beer actually took on a bit of a sour characteristic, which I didn't expect, but wasn't entirely unpleasant.  

Beth, my wife, compared it to a barley wine.  Overall, I didn't get much of the wood character that I was expecting, but I really did enjoy drinking the beer.  I think I might enjoy the beer a bit more in cooler weather, and plan to cellar the remaining three bottles to see how the beer changes over time.

I love to see breweries trying new things with their beer, and while I wouldn't rank this beer in my top 10 all time favorites, I definitely think it's a great beer, and recommend trying it if you can get your hands on a bottle.

Not entirely certain what I'm going to write about next week, but I hope you'll join me to find out where I go next.

This One's For the Girls

This week I have a guest post from my own wife, Beth.

Well hello there!  I'm the "other half" of Pants Monkey Brewing so to speak - as I'm the wife of the brewer!  Anyway, I'm writing this post for the girls today.  So guys, if you're having a hard time convincing your wife/girlfriend/significant other that homebrewing is a good idea, have them read this post.  Or any ladies lurking on their own, maybe you're interested in brewing but were too shy to say anything, this post is for you too.

So, why do I love homebrew?  First off, it helps that I love beer.  I didn't always love beer though.  It took me a number of years after turning the legal drinking age before I really had a taste for it.  I blame that on the fact that on my 21st birthday I was force fed beer to get to bring home a free mug and yeah, that turned me off of it for quite a while.  Flash forward a few years and my husband, the author of this blog, kept saying how good beer was with pizza or hamburgers and I decided, I really want to try to like beer.  I started with something simple, Leinenkugel's Apple seasonal from that winter, since it was more like cider and worked up from there.

Gradually, we found ourselves into the craft beer scene more and more and then hubby inherted some brewing equipment and said he wanted to try making his own beer, so I said sure, why not?  At the time he was out of work and needed something to occupy his time and I figured, if we make our own beer maybe we'll save money by not having to buy beer as much.

Now, I will have to be honest with you, homebrew is not necessarily always cheaper.  And there can be a lot of cost up front - but over some time it will start to pay for itself the more you get into it.  I will admit, I was more willing to let him start brewing because we did inherit so much of the start up equipment.  But, I also was rather intregued by the concept of being able to make our own beer from scratch.  I love DIY.  I'm not good at most DIY, but this one just seemed do-able.

So that was four years ago and our love of homebrew and beer in general has just grown more and more. The craft beer scene here in MN has exploded in the last probably two years or so and that has just fueled our fire for homebrew.  We see what these awesome local breweries are doing and we want to try it ourselves!  For Christmas two years ago I gifted my husband tickets to Winterfest, a giant craft beer event in St. Paul, MN.  We had a blast trying different beers and I was inspired to create my own recipe after attending!  You heard me right - I actually created a recipe and did the work to make my own Cherry Wheat beer.  My husband likes to crudely call it "Beth's Poppin Her Cherry Wheat Beer" since it was my very first time making everything from start to finish.  He's naughty like that though.

Another reason I love homebrew is I love to throw parties - I'm the quintessential Monica from "Friends", I love being the hostess.  Having a bar with seven kegs now gives me an excuse to throw one hell of a big party in the fall for Oktoberfest.  I love this annual event, we invite our friends, family and co-workers and it's a blast.  It wouldn't happen without homebrew!

Finally, the biggest reason I support my husband's homebrew hobby and why I love it - it's something we enjoy and can do together.  I love sitting out on the deck with him on brew day, I like drinking the beer together and discussing the way it tastes, I even like going to the homebrew supply store and helping pick out the next kit.  And homebrewing makes him insanely happy.  He is adorable when he talks to people about it, his face lights up and it just makes me all warm and fuzzy inside.  I'm probably embarassing him and getting all mushy, but seriously, we've had some stressful times in the last few years between work, family drama and other things, but homebrew is something that relaxes us and kind of makes those problems go away.  It is such a wonderful part of our life as a married couple.

So, ladies, I don't know if I did a good job to convince you or not, but I really do think you should give it a try.  It's satisfying and fun and your husband/boyfriend/significant other will love you for it.  If nothing else, tell them that if you let them do this, they have to buy you something pretty in exchange!  I'm teasing.  If you are seriously interested in beer or trying homebrew yourself, there are a couple of organizations geared towards women you should check out.  Barley's Angels is a beer group that meets at a bar/pub to sample and learn about beers, usually on a monthly basis.  I haven't made it to the local chapter meetings here in MN yet, but they are a very active group and it looks like they have a ton of fun.  I have had the chance to participate in another local Minneapolis women's group though - Bitches Brew Crew, they meet monthly to brew a batch of beer from start to finish.  I don't doubt there are other groups like that in other places too, check Meetup.com or Facebook, you never know what you might find!

Yeast - The fungus amongus

Beer, or at least something like what we call beer today, has actually been an extremely important part of human history.  For a long time, beer was actually one of the only clean, safe sources of drinking water available to us, and in large part, thanks to yeast.

Back before we even knew what yeast was, we knew that drinking beer was safer than drinking water straight from a river, lake or well.  We didn't know why at the time, but the whole process of making beer kills microorganisms, such as parasites, bacteria and fungus, that are harmful to us, and pretty much all of the microorganisms that are harmful to us (yeast is actually a fungus, but isn't harmful to us) can't survive in even the tiny amounts of alcohol found in beer, so beer stays safe to drink months, even years after having been brewed.

What makes the alcohol that keeps the beer safe to drink?  The yeast, of course. But what about today, when clean, safe drinking water is plentiful in first world nations, why drink it now?  Well, despite what some people would have you believe, beer is actually fairly nutritious. Beer is a source of protein, some complex carbohydrates, potassium, and various vitamin B complexes such as niacin and folic acid.  Yeast is directly responsible for the vitamin B found in beer.

OK, lets not kid ourselves.  We don't drink beer for the nutritional value, we drink beer for the way it tastes, and for the small amount of alcohol it provides.  But that's OK.  There's nothing wrong with drinking beer as long as it's done responsibly.  

OK, back to yeast.  As I said, yeast provides the alcohol in beer, and can also provide carbonation as both alcohol and CO2 are waste products for the yeast.  Yeast also adds a lot to the flavor of the beer.  Some yeast strains will help bring out the malty flavor of the beer, or accentuate the hops.  Some yeast strains, such as Belgian yeast strains, will give the beer a strong fruity or spicy flavor.  You can easily test this to see the difference that yeast can give the beer yourself by splitting a batch of wort into two different fermenters, and pitch a different yeast in each fermenter.

Yeast can also contribute to a lot of the off flavors in beer, such as making the beer taste cidery, or buttery, or fruity when you're really not looking for a fruity tasting beer.  Yeast will also clean up a lot of these off flavors if left to their own devices.

Lets talk a little about the choices we have for yeast.  First off, don't buy baker's yeast to ferment beer.  It will ferment the beer, a bit, but it's generally not very alcohol tolerant, so it might not ferment out as far as you'd like, and baker's yeast generally doesn't have as stringent quality control as brewing yeast, and for good reason.  If you're making bread, you're only going to let the yeast interact with the dough for a few hours as most before baking the bread.  If you have another microorganism in with the yeast, it really isn't going to have time to cause any real issues with the bread before it's baked.

On the other hand, you're going to let your brewing yeast remain in with your beer for days, if not months or years, so a little acetobacter or lactobacillus will have plenty of time to start multiplying and changing the flavor of your beer considerably.

Brewer's yeast
So what about our choices for brewer's yeast?  First we have dry yeast.  One of the great things about dry yeast is that the process of drying the yeast preserves the yeast really well, so it won't degrade much over time.  It's also packed with nutrients to help kick start the yeast once you add it to your beer, and you can get a lot of healthy yeast packed in a really small container, so one packet of yeast is enough to brew 5 gallons of beer without a problem.  Dry yeast is also very inexpensive when compared to liquid yeast.  The downside of the dry yeast is that there just isn't a very wide selection of dry yeasts to choose from, so you're pretty limited in what you can do with the beer, as far as changing the yeast goes.  Dry yeast is also typically very clean fermenting, so you don't end up with much for off-flavors, but sometimes you actually want the off flavors to add complexity to the beer.

Then we have liquid yeast. Liquid yeast isn't nearly as hardy, and starts to degrade quickly after packaging, even when stored in ideal conditions.  The packages of liquid yeast marketed for only needing one packet of yeast for a 5 gallon batch, don't actually have enough living yeast to ferment the beer well.  On the other hand, you have tons of choices when it comes to liquid yeast.  You can buy yeast specifically for the flavors and properties that you want in your beer, so you can have full control over your end product (or at least as much control as you can expect to have over a living organism.)

Another down side of liquid yeast is that it tends to be fairly expensive, making up to 1/4 the cost of the entire beer you make.  You can mitigate this cost a bit by reusing the yeast.  After you've fermented a batch of beer, most of the yeast falls out of suspension, and ends up at the bottom of your fermenter.  After you remove the beer, you can pour another batch of wort on top of that yeast cake, and then you don't have to pitch any more yeast.  The yeast at the bottom of the fermenter will be more than enough to ferment another batch of beer.  You'll want to reuse the yeast cake within about a week, and you'll want to make sure you don't needlessly expose the yeast to other microorganisms, so keep it covered.


If you just reuse the yeast at the bottom of the fermenter in this fashion, you will end up with a little of the beer from the first batch getting into the second batch of beer.  This means any flavors from the first batch will be added to the second.  You can always make the same recipe, but that can get boring, so just make sure the flavors from the first beer won't be unacceptable in the second batch.  If the first batch was a double IPA, you probably wouldn't want the second batch to be an american light lager. An easy way to account for the flavors of the first batch is to simply make the first batch a lighter tasting beer, and make the second batch a bit stronger tasting.

Another possibility, to remove the non-yeast part of the trub (trub is the sediment at the bottom of the fermenter, not all of which is yeast), and remove most of the flavor influence of the previous batch of beer is to wash the yeast.  I'll try to write an article on washing yeast in the future.


Many American breweries will reuse yeast for up to 10 generations of yeast, but Belgian breweries have been known to use the same yeast cake for upwards of 100 generations of yeast.

Along with your normal brewer's yeast, you can also get some specialty yeasts and bacteria to really change the way your beer tastes. Brettanomyces, lactobacillus, acetobacter and pediococcus can all be added to your beer to add interesting, unique flavors.  If you do ever work with these non-traditional microorganisms, it's a good idea to have a separate set of equipment for the fermentation and bottling/kegging of the beer so you don't inadvertently infect other batches of beer.

Preparing yeast to use
For the homebrew scale, 200 billion yeast cells is considered to be roughly the right amount of yeast to use for a 5 gallon batch of beer.  On the commercial scale, even this wouldn't be nearly enough. You do want enough healthy yeast to minimize off-flavors and to make sure the beer is fully fermented. If you don't have enough healthy yeast, the yeast may produce more of the compounds that contribute to off-flavors, and may even give up on fermenting before all the fermentable sugar is gone.
   
Preparing dry yeast is easy. Generally speaking, a packet of dry yeast has enough viable yeast to brew a 5 gallon batch of beer as-is. You should let it get to room temperature before pitching (actually, you should get it to the temperature of the wort you're intending on pitching the yeast into.)  After letting the yeast get to room temperature, you can "proof" the yeast, which basically means you're making sure the yeast is still good by putting it in a small water/sugar mixture to see if it starts to ferment in the mixture before pitching it in your wort.

Liquid yeast might require a bit more work to get ready to ferment your batch of beer. Wyeast guarantees their activator yeast packages to have at least 100 billion viable yeast cells at the time of packaging. White labs used to advertise their vials of yeast as containing roughly 50 billion viable yeast cells, but upped it to 100 billion a few years ago.

Unfortunately, 100 billion viable yeast cells is roughly half of what we need for healthy fermentation, and the cell count starts going down fairly rapidly after packaging (by the time it leaves the factory, it's down to roughly 95% viability).  You could always pitch multiple packages of yeast in your wort to get enough yeast, but liquid yeast isn't cheap.  A good alternative is to make a yeast starter.

A yeast starter is basically a tiny batch of beer, with the specific purpose of generating more yeast to pitch in your larger batch of beer. While there are a variety of calculators out there for figuring out the size of the yeast starter you'll need, Mr. Malty's Pitching Rate Calculator is generally considered the definitive resource to use.

Before we make the starter, you're going to want to take the yeast out of the refrigerator and let it warm to room temperature.  The yeast, as it warms up, will start giving off some CO2.  If the yeast is in a vial, you may want to periodically unscrew the top a little to let the excess CO2 escape, and then seal the vial again.  If you have a Wyeast smack pack, there will be a small packet of yeast nutrient inside the main container, you'll want to smack your package of yeast hard enough to rupture this nutrient packet.  The smack pack will then slowly inflate as the yeast wakes up and starts consuming the nutrients.

The following recipe I'm going to give you is a great starting point for making a yeast starter, but it may not be the right size starter for all batches of beer you make.
2 cups water
1/2 cup extra light dry malt extract
2-4 hop pellets (you don't really need the hops, I just like to add them to make it a little more like beer.)

You basically make it like any other beer.  Dissolve the malt extract in the water, bring it to a boil and add the hops.  In this case though, you really only need to boil for about 10 minutes, just long enough to kill anything that might have been living in any of the ingredients.  You then cool it, put it in an appropriately sized container (I like to use a growler), shake it up really well to aerate the wort, pitch your yeast and then use something to cover the container that will let the CO2 out.  I actually use an airlock, but some people just use a piece of sanitized aluminum foil.

Let it ferment for 2-3 days, and it will be ready to pitch in your bigger batch of beer.

You might find that your starter is getting so large you don't want to pour the whole thing in your large batch of beer (for a higher gravity beer, you may need to make a 1 gallon starter).  If that's the case, after the starter has finished fermenting, place it in your refrigerator for a day or two, so the yeast all falls out of suspension, and then pour most of the liquid off the top.  Just be sure to leave enough liquid in the container so you can shake the yeast up enough so it's not completely stuck to the bottom.

I hope this gives you a good primer in yeast and how to use it in your beer.  I'm sure I'll have another post somewhere down the line with a little more in-depth information on yeast.

Next week will be a guest post from my wife on being a woman in the world of homebrew.

Bottling your beer

This post comes about a day later than normal.  My week has been a bit busier than normal, so I hadn't had time to write this post yet.  Part of the time has been spent learning about a couple of new brewing techniques that I hope to share with you in the future.

After brewing a batch of beer and letting it finish fermenting, you need a convenient way to store the beer that should also be easy to dispense, and for most styles, you'll also want to be able to properly carbonate the beer.

While there are actually a wide variety of ways to tackle these issues, the first method that most people use is bottling their beer.

Bottling beer, while not the fastest or easiest way to carbonate and store your homebrew, is inexpensive and easily approachable for the new brewer.

The things you absolutely need are bottles, bottle caps and a bottle capper.  You could use  PET beer bottles instead of glass, but I'm going to focus on traditional glass bottles for this post.

When it comes to choosing the bottles to use, if you're going with glass bottles, you want to get the pry-off style bottles, not the ones with the twist-off caps.  The bottle cappers you are likely to use as a homebrewer aren't designed to properly apply caps to twist-off bottles, and could either break the bottle or cause a poor seal, so your beer will be flat instead of well carbonated.

After that, most 12oz or 22oz bottles should work fine, but your best bet is to get the amber colored bottles.  Green or clear bottles let through too much UV (ultraviolet) light, which will cause the beer to become skunky tasting (UV light reacts with the alpha acids in the hops, causing it to break down to sulfur compounds similar to those found in skunk spray) if the bottles aren't stored in a dark place.  Amber bottles block the UV light, so you won't have to worry about your beer going skunky.

A great way to source beer bottles is to buy beer, and save the bottles when you're done drinking the beer.  If you haven't been collecting beer bottles all along, it can be difficult to get 50+ bottles this way quickly, so you can also buy bottles from the link I provided above or at your local homebrew store.  You can also check out Craigslist.  I ended up getting about 6 cases of bottles for free off Craigslist when I first started brewing.


If you do end up using bottles from beer you've purchased, it's a lot easier to rinse out the bottles when you're done drinking beer than it is to try washing the dried beer residue off later.

Things you don't strictly need but should still have are: sanitizer, a bottling bucket, a bottling wand, and an auto siphon (a racking cane works fine too, but you'll have to start a siphon by sucking on the hose, which could potentially cause an infection in your beer.)  You'll also need some vinyl tubing, which you should be able to pick up at your local hardware store.  I find 5/16" ID tubing works best for me, but you might have trouble getting it on some of the equipment, so you might find 3/8" ID tubing works better for you.

A couple of things that are nice to have, but aren't really necessary are a bottling tree and a  a bottle rinser. The bottle rinser makes it easier to sanitize the bottles and the bottling tree gives you a convenient place to put the sanitized bottles until you're ready to fill them.  You might decide you want to buy them somewhere down the line as they do make the bottling process easier, but aren't necessary for bottling your first batch of beer.

You'll also need some sort of sugar to "prime" your beer.  That basically just means adding a bit more sugar so the yeast can create CO2 to carbonate the beer in the bottles.  Table sugar works OK, but most people use dextrose, also known as corn sugar, because normal table sugar can cause some off flavors in the beer. I also know some people that absolutely swear by conditioning tablets. Getting the sugar properly mixed with the freshly fermented beer can be a bit tough sometimes, and the conditioning tablets ensures you're getting the proper amount of sugar in each bottle to provide the appropriate amount of carbonation. 

First things first, make sure your bottles are clean.  If you're using used beer bottles, clean them thoroughly with soap and water, using a bottle brush to tackle any stubborn gunk.  If you've purchased new bottles, just rinse them out to get any dust or debris out of the bottles.

Next, mix up a batch of sanitizer and sanitize your bottling bucket, auto-siphon (or racking cane), vinyl tubing and bottling wand.  If you're using a bottling tree, now is a great time to sanitize that as well.  

Once everything is sanitized, connect the bottling wand to the spigot on the bottling bucket.  You can cut an inch or two from the vinyl tubing and use that to connect the two together.  I suggest pouring a little bit of sanitizer in your bottling bucket so you can verify you know how the spigot and bottle filler work.  Just make sure you get all of the sanitizer out of the bucket before you put your beer in the bottling bucket.

Next, if you're using loose dextrose or table sugar for priming sugar, put about 1/2 cup of water in a pan and add about 5 oz. of the dextrose/table sugar to the pan (you may want to adjust the amount of sugar used in future batches to get the carbonation level you want.  The 5 oz. of sugar is fine for your first 5 gallon batch of beer, but you might want your beer more or less carbonated in future batches.)  Then heat it to a boil and boil the sugar/water mixture for 10 minutes.

After the sugar mixture has boiled for 10 minutes, pour it into the sanitized bottling bucket.  Then connect your vinyl tubing to your auto-siphon and transfer your beer from your fermenter to the bottling bucket.  MAKE SURE THE SPIGOT IS TURNED OFF ON THE BOTTLING BUCKET!!! otherwise you might end up with beer slowly leaking all over your floor, and you don't want that.  

You'll want to make sure the sugar is well mixed in with the beer at this stage.  If it isn't well mixed in, you will end up with under/over-carbonated beer, and can actually end up with bottles so over-carbonated that they literally explode, but you also want to be careful not to stir the beer too vigorously, or you'll mix in a lot of oxygen, which will cause your beer to go stale quickly (this issue of needing to mix the sugar into the beer well, but not oxidizing the beer is why many people use the conditioning tablets.)

While your beer is transferring to the bottling bucket, this is a perfect time to sanitize your bottles and caps.  The bottle caps are easy, just fill a bowl with a bit of sanitizer solution and put the bottle caps in the bowl.  For the bottles, you can dunk them in sanitizer, or if you bought the bottle rinser, just fill the rinser with sanitizer and pump the bottle down on the rinser a couple of times.  If you bought the bottling tree, put the sanitized bottles on the tree, otherwise, just put them somewhere that they aren't likely to have anything fall into the bottle while it's waiting to be filled.

Now for the moment of truth, filling and capping your first bottle!  I personally like to open the door of my dishwasher and fill the bottles over the door so it catches any spills, but you can just put down a dish towel to catch any drips or spills.  Just don't try to fill the bottles over your carpeting, or you'll stain the carpet.

Open the nozzle on your bottling bucket and slip the bottling wand into your first bottle, and push the bottling wand down against the bottom of the bottle.  The bottle might fill more quickly that you're expecting, but wait until the beer is level with the top of the neck of the bottle, then remove the bottling wand.  This should leave just enough of a gap at the top of the bottle (you want about a 1-inch gap between the beer and the top of the bottle, just like a commercially purchased bottle of beer.)  

If you're using conditioning tablets, add the appropriate number of tablets to the bottle.  The packaging should give you an indication as to how many to use.

Set the bottle on the counter, place a (sanitized) bottle cap over the top of the bottle, then use the bottle capper to crimp the bottle cap in place (usually you just put the capper on top of the cap and push down on the wings, you should have gotten some instructions with the capper.)

Congratulations, you've just finished bottling your first bottle of beer!  Now fill another 45 to 55 bottles and you'll be done.  The way I usually did it was, my wife would fill a bottle and I would cap it.  The whole process typically took about 2 hours beginning to end.

Once all of your beer is bottled, it will take about a week or so to fully carbonate, but will probably taste a bit off for up to 3 weeks.  The yeast still in the bottle will clean up the off flavors over those three weeks.

If you decide to open a bottle of beer before the three weeks are up, don't be concerned if your beer tastes a bit funny.  It takes some time for certain compounds in the beer to break down.  If you open a beer after 3 weeks and it still tastes funny, give it some more time.  Many beers do improve with age.  About the only exceptions are hefeweisens (and other wheat beers) and some farmhouse ales which rely on esters to add complexity to the beer.

While I have mostly moved to kegging, I do still bottle smaller batches of beer, and may bottle larger beers (high alcohol content), like barley wines, that should be aged for a considerable amount of time, but I haven't yet made any beers quite that big yet.

I will discuss kegging somewhere down the line, but bottling should be a good start for you.  I think next week I will discuss yeast a bit more and how it contributes to the end beer.