Keep it bottled up

The next day, I took another hydrometer reading. This time, it read 1.014, which was almost what I wanted to see before bottling. There were two other factors to consider:

• Starting gravity had been high enough that my delta was already bigger than the recipe called for.
• If I didn't bottle that day, I wasn't sure when I'd have a chance to.

Time to bottle!

I sanitized my bottles in the dishwasher, because my dishwasher does have a sanitize setting, and I read on the internet that you can do that. Also, the thought of sanitizing them all by hand made me want to run to the liquor store.

The downside was that this actually took a lot longer than I expected, something like an hour and a half. As soon as I starting running the dishwasher, I set about hand-sanitizing all the other components I would need. And then the Patriots-Jets game was on. I ended up leaving everything out for a couple of hours, worrying the whole time whether they were attracting wild yeasts.

At the time, I thought that this hours-long hiatus could potentially be the worst thing that could happen during bottling. I was wrong.

Boiling the bottle caps

The next few steps were easy to follow. I boiled my bottle caps for five minutes, then removed them with a skimmer. Next, I dissolved 3/4 cup priming sugar in 8 oz water. Finally, I poured the syrup into my bottling bucket and prepared to siphon.

I don't know how most people siphon, but I got an "Auto-Siphon" with my kit that impressed me as much as any basic technology I can remember since the first time I saw carbon paper. I stuck that thing into my fermentation bucket, gave it a pump, and out came a steady stream of beer. The book and the directions had advised against splashing. I didn't even have to try not to. The siphon was gentle as a summer breeze.

Siphoning from the fermenter (top) to the bottling bucket (bottom)

Once the majority of the wort had been transferred to the bottling bucket, leaving only about a half-inch or so of mostly sediment,* it was onto the next step. Here, again, I owed a big assist to my equipment. I had a bottle filler, which was an implement that attached to one end of the siphon. I inserted it into each bottle, pushed it against the bottom, and watched the bottle fill up with no splashing. When I removed the bottle filler, it barely dripped. Even with what little I still know about homebrewing, I would definitely recommend using one of these things.

My bottles were filled and I was ready to cap them. This should have been the easiest part of the whole process. Instead, this was the part that nearly ruined everything.

*The layer of sediment left behind in the fermentation bucket was something to behold. It was a good centimeter-deep layer of greenish-brown sludge. Lots of unsavory analogies came to mind. Sometimes it's better not to know how the sausage is made.