Have a Bottlin' Good Time

Bottling your Homebrew - 101

A post back in November drew a response from Zak of Sydney in relation to bottling your homebrew and I thought this a good chance to discuss a few homebrew related chores and maybe seek out a few suggestions from the homebrew web. I’ll also throw in some gems of wisdom gleaned from our own experiences.

Zak said;

Homebrew is coming along great. Got a batch of Cooper's Draught ready to pop on Saturday. I actually started this one on the 13th of October but didn't bottle it til the 17th this month due to laziness and the dreading of bottling (which in the end, as usual, is not so bad). Do you know if this extra month in the fermenter affects the brew at all? The final gravity or whatever didn't change so I'm guessing not.

Bottling your brew is one of those things that lingers in your planning thoughts like a visit to Grandmas’; you fret over it a bit, you can think of things you’d rather be doing, but once it’s done, it’s done and things get back to normal fairly quickly. And, like Zak says, it’s rarely as bad as you think it will be. But there are some DO’s and DO NOT DO’s that can make bottling your beer as easy as putting liquid into a glass container.

First, while it’s good to let your beer rest before drinking it, it is better to have it resting in individual stubbies rather than in one big fermenter. Having said that, you probably won’t break the beer by leaving it in the tub, it just won’t be at its best. This is mainly because, as the yeast burns up and fades away, its dead cells can impart a ‘dud’ note to the finished beer, particularly if there is any disturbance of the sludge at the bottom of the fermenter. The beer will be a little ‘yeasty’ or ‘bready’ in the nose. It’s just better to let the yeast do its thang, wait two or here days after fermentation has ceased to let the yeast sediment settle to the bottom and then remove the beer sooner rather than later.

The other issue is that, with some yeasts, if left to die off too much there may not be enough viable stuff left over to kick start the bottle conditioning. The finished brew may be left under carbonated. If you have brewed a Bitter or a nice mild pale ale, then stand back and shout “HurrAh!” If you wanted a lively pilsner or a crisp, refreshing and bubbly lager, then you may want to slap your forehead and utter a small “D’Oh!”.

Now to the bottling. The main reason homebrewers dislike bottling is that it can be a fairly ‘drone-like’ procedure which lacks the artistry of the cooking and pitching and fermenting performance. It’s just all a bit boring, really. Of course, it’s a much easier job when it’s shared and bottling with a mate not only cuts the time taken by MORE than half, but it gives you someone to talk beer with – and someone to crack a coldie with to finish the bottling session and to toast the new brew. If it costs you a half a ‘D at the end of the lagering stage, then that’s a small price to pay. And is there a better gift than the gift of beer?

I’ll describe our particular bottling process here and readers who want to can also surf the web for some interesting variations – in particular from those crazy American homebrewers who seem to have to make everything they do a convoluted and arse numbingly difficult procedure! I’ll bust it up into separate posts so it’s not so long. And boring for those who don’t homebrew. But, so those people don’t skip over it altogether; and to reward those who do, I have strategically hidden some boobies in amongst the information. See if you can spot them!

Have a Bottlin' Good Time - Part Two

CLEANING & SANITISING

There is no more important facet of homebrewing than cleanliness, sanitariness and, as a result, perfect beeriness. Bottles need to be cleaned first and this is best done as you finish pouring the beer out of them and into your glass. Rinsing them now means that washing them after is an easier job and the cleaning is more thorough. I give all mine a quick swish with cold water – saving the water for the vegies – and then wash them in the sink before doing the dishes. If you inherit bottles from a friend or Uncle, give them a really good scrub inside and out with a bottle brush for the first go and from then on you should be able to rinse wash and sanitise them quickly.

When we began brewing, we bought a 60 ltr rubbish bin and filled it with powdered sanitising solution then stacked as many stubbies and long necks into it as would fit, adding more water as the level rose. We then had to empty and rinse each bottle, resting them on the washing machine and tipping into the laundry trough, until we had 60 375ml bottles ready to fill. This was hugely labour intensive and time consuming, not to mention as boring as mud. If you use a sodium metabisulphite sanitiser, the stink is off putting to say the least and this stuff is not good for asthmatics and kids. It can also take a couple of rinses before you can bottle. Cooper’s make a ‘softer’ style sanitiser of sodium percarbonate but it needs to be left overnight and also needs rinsing in hot water. I find that these products also require the ‘sniffing’ of each stubby to make sure they are ‘clear’.

All these processes work and, at the end of the day, that’s what you want but there are easier ways that still ensure that your bottles are sanitised. I had heard about a rinse free sanitiser and eventually found it. Morgan’s Sanitize contains Hydrogen Peroxide and silver ions and is pretty inexpensive at about $4 for 250ml. Diluted at a rate of 30ml to a litre it is more than enough to do a whole batch worth of stubbies. We bought ourselves an atomiser, and here’s a picture;

... which makes it even easier to sanitise the bottles. We just pop a litre of diluted sanitiser into the bowl part and then plunge each stubby onto the sticking-up bit which sprays a covering of liquid onto the inside surface of the glass. We can then stack up to 80 bottles onto the drying tree and we are away! The sanitiser dries off without the need for rinsing which means we can move swiftly into the next phase of the process. Priming.

PRIMING & FILLING

The next ‘finicky’ step required to get your beer from the fermenter to the fridge is the priming, or secondary fermentation. Homebrew requires a second jolt of yeast activity to bring the alcohol content up to par and to carbonate the beer properly by the creation of CO2 in the stubby. This can be achieved in many ways – see ‘Crazy American Techniques’ – but the simplest is plain, ordinary, common, garden variety white sugar at a rate of half a teaspoon to 375ml or one teaspoon to 700/750/800ml bottle. An even easier way is to use carbonation drops which are solid pre-measured lollies of sugar, some of which are made by Cooper’s.

If you use granulated sugar you must clean, sanitise and thoroughly dry a small funnel and teaspoon measure, then set up as many bottles as will fit your work area, load them all with a measure of clean sugar, moving the funnel with a shake to dislodge any grains until all are primed, then continue on to the filling and capping. With the drops, you can bypass the cleaning, drying and funnelling stages, simply dropping one drop into each bottle. Nice. And quick.

Filling your bottles is a straightforward process with the right equipment and care taken to sanitise it. A filler tube (some are labelled ‘Little Bottler’) attaches to the spout of the fermenter and allows the beer to be transferred smoothly and quietly into bottles. It is important that the beer not create too much ‘bubble’ when filling as this can lead to oxygenation of the beer. Not good. I’ll explain further soon.

There are those who use syphons to fill the bottles but this is just such a palava that I won’t even go into it here. Once the bottles are all filled – either all at once or in manageable batches – just pop a sanitised crown seal on top and proceed directly to capping.

Having a Bottling Good Time - Part Three

CAPPING & SECONDARY FERMENTATION

Welcome to capping and secondary fermentation. As you filled each bottle you will have left a 1 or 2 centimetre gap at the top of the bottle. We don’t fill our stubs all the way to the top because the yeast activity in the bottle fermentation stage creates CO2, or bubbles, in the beer which will cause the bottle to release its cap in a most violent and inconvenient way when you least expect it. By leaving a gap, the CO2 can form and then become dissolved into the beer, thus creating the miracle of carbonation. This is also why an accurately pre-measured dose of sugar is beneficial.

At this point many homebrewers simply cap the bottles using a contraption known, conveniently, as a ‘capper’ and move on to the storage stage. My research has uncovered a beer theory, or beerthory, which may or may not have some merit. Some homies suggest that by capping immediately you can trap oxygen in the top of the bottle neck and oxygen is a sworn enemy of beer. It creates ‘oxygenation’ which can affect the taste of the finished beer. Of course, oxygen itself is not a bad thing for beer altogether. The ‘O’ in CO2 is, after all, oxygen and pouring a nice beer into a glass allows oxygen to release the full range of flavours which would otherwise be wasted on you and then, if you yourself didn’t have oxygen, well, you’d be dead and then the whole beer thing would really be wasted on you, wouldn’t it?

The suggestion is that, by sitting the caps onto the bottle and resting before capping, the CO2 activity will push the oxygen from the space in the neck of the bottle and replace it with CO2 only, thus preventing oxygenation. I might give this a go out of interest alone and let you know if I can detect any difference at all. My thoughts are that the amount of CO2, or oxygen for that matter, is pretty minimal in the overall scheme of things and CO2 contains oxygen anyway so I don’t imagine that even Beery McBeer-Beer* the famous beer taster would be able to detect any difference in the final tasting. Just move on to capping.

There are a few ways of securing the cap onto the bottle, most of which would be right at home in a museum for instruments of torture or stupidity when compared with the options available. Mallets and cap holders of all shapes and sizes are illustrated in homebrew books and catalogs but they are quite simply prehistoric when compared to a bench capper. A bench capper is also a lot safer on the bottles and on the user. Why would you want to hit your beer with a hammer when you can just pull on a handle?

The final step is to tilt and turn your bottle a few times to properly mix the sugar or kick start the carbonation drop and then set your stock aside at room temperature for at least two weeks. I like to give mine at least four and I prefer six weeks. Many swear by two months. As long as the beer has time to carbonate. Check by drinking at two week intervals.

This is a longish piece by Beer Bloke standards but I think if it helps someone to make more and better beer then it’s OK. Over 17 batches I have tried to streamline the process by trying different techniques and as long as you don’t sacrifice sanitation and cleanliness for speed then anything that encourages more people to brew can only lead to a better society for everyone.

Cheers,
Prof. Pilsner

*There is not really any real person called Beery Mc Beer-Beer. I just made him up for effect. I based him on Homer Simpson’s ‘Hootie Mc Boobs’.