Make Beer - Quit Paying Taxes (Well, almost...) by Chris Devaney  PAGE 3 of 4  <BACK

Bottling

The kit comes with sugar drops for priming the bottles.  Without the kit you need to add 1/2 teaspoon of sugar to each 12 oz. bottle.  Some recipes suggest 1 teaspoon for each bottle.  I prefer to err on the less gassy side and use 1/2 teaspoon.  The priming sugar is what produces the carbonation to the beer as fermentation proceeds a bit more while in the bottle.  Carbon dioxide produced during this secondary fermentation adds the sparkle to your brew and leaves a light sediment deposit at the bottom of the bottle.  The sediment will normally adhere sufficiently to the bottom of the bottle but careful decanting during the imbibing stage will yield a clear poured mug of your prized beer.  The adherence of the sediment is a property of the yeast you use and is called flocculation.  No doubt I would have been spanked for saying that word when I was kid, but within brewing circles, I feel linguistically unencumbered.  I never fail to point out how well flocculated my home brew turns out and I haven’t been spanked since I started brewing my own. 

Caution: Bottling is a critical stage.  If you add too much sugar during the bottling stage you can, and most likely will, burst the bottles or at best, blow the caps off the bottle during aging.  This is a very dangerous situation.  A bursting bottle can hurl glass fragments that can cause injury or death.  It can imbed glass fragments in walls.  In earlier beer making episodes I have seen bottle caps blow off and imbed into the ceiling.  I have also ruined carpets and scared the bejesus out of myself and others.  Of course, I’m divorced now .  .  .  so enough said.  Use care here.  Remember, other than injury, there’s nothing worse than having to lick the beer off the ceiling.

16.     Add one priming sugar drop to each bottle.  One drop equates to 1/2 teaspoon of sugar.

17.     Position the fermenter so that you can siphon the beer without disturbing the now heavy deposit on the bottom of the vessel.  Insert a proper length of clean plastic tubing and begin to siphon the liquid to fill each bottle.  Having some kind of shut off valve or pinching device on the tubing helps to avoid a mess.  Fill each bottle leaving a 2” space at the top.  Don’t let the siphon draw from the very bottom or you’ll disturb the sediment layer and cloud your beer. 

18.     Use the capper to securely crimp each cap to the filled bottle.  You can cap as you go or wait until all the bottles are filled and then cap.  Once again, I use clean and sanitized Mason jars for this and it works adequately.

19.     Tip each bottle upside down several times to wet the seal.

Ageing

The ageing process, sometimes referred to as ‘lagering’, depends heavily on the style of beer and the storage temperature.  Lager style beers generally benefit from longer storage at cooler temperatures.  Typically anywhere from 2 weeks to 3 months is used.  but patience often eludes me and I have never been able to ‘lager’ a beer longer than 4 weeks.  “Oh God, deliver me patience” I pray.  But patience never comes and the consumption phase begins for me 2 weeks without deleterious affects even though it is slightly before its peak flavor.

20.     Store the bottles upright in a safe place preferably cool and certainly protected from the potential of explosion. 

21.     I haven’t been into a drinking establishment for over 20 years so I haven’t seen these around for a while but it used to be that you could get heavy cartons with individual slots for each bottle.  These helped somewhat in protecting adjacent bottles from getting destroyed if the next bottle over from it exploded. 

Consumption

Not too much to say here except use care when dispensing the beer from the bottle into a clean (non-detergent washed) mug so as not to disturb the slight sediment resulting from the secondary fermentation that took place in the bottle.  The sediment won’t hurt you, in fact it is quite healthy.  Compare the price of Brewer’s Yeast at the pharmacy.  Then rejoice knowing that you have some at the bottom of each and every bottle.

Finally, I won’t expound about the dangers of alcohol and driving or use thereof during other life activities that require full attention, normal unimpaired judgment and attitude control.  There are real dangers associated with drinking alcohol, you know about them and so do I.  Drink responsibly, live respectfully.  Obey the drinking laws and never allow underage drinking. 

Where to Go From Here

With a kit beer, it’s hard to make a bad beer or ale.  It’s just that simple.  The only problem is that there are only so many beer styles for which kits are available.  Perhaps you have a favorite beer, ale, stout or whatever, that you would like to emulate on your own and make yourself.  You can, and there are recipes available for emulating many popular and not-so popular commercial brews.  Experimenting is part of the fun.  See the reference section at the end for a listing. 

The real challenge in home brewing is two-fold: first to prepare a great-tasting brew that is just like your favorite commercially available one or perhaps to have some good Scottish ale without footing a costly trip to a pub in Scotland.  With today’s kits and sufficient experience, that’s not too hard to do.  Secondly, and this is the most challenging task for the home-brewer, to be able to faithfully reproduce a batch you have previously produced that you liked.  As you get more involved in home brewing, you’ll develop a healthy respect for the quality control that goes into commercial brewing.  It’s simply astounding how a big brewery can make a product that tastes the same over the span of millions of cans or bottles.  

To be able to experiment successfully without ending up making a batch of malt vinegar or something so vile you relabel it and use it as “slug bait” (beer, good or bad,  works like a charm to trap slugs), it helps to know a little about the ingredients and how they interact as well as the fermentation process itself.  As you gain confidence with your brewing skills you will certainly opt for using more advanced methods like mashing your own malt, all-grain brews, adding hops directly and maybe even better temperature control.  Let’s take a look at some of the variables.

Malt

Most beer is made from barley although other grains like wheat, sorghum, oats and others are used to a lesser extent.  Barley is the grain of choice because it has a high starch content and through the use of its own enzymatic action, can produce an abundance of sugars of varying kinds and fermentability.  To be useful for brewing the grain is malted, crushed and then dehydrated and stored.  It may be made into a malt extract or sold as processed grain.   

Malting:

In the malting process, the grain is allowed to germinate to produce the necessary enzymes.  The enzymes begin the task of sugar conversion, but by no means complete it before the germination is forcibly stopped as the grain is kilned.  Various heating cycles are used to produce the different malt styles (pale, amber, dark, crystal etc.).  At this stage the dried malt is rolled and cracked open and stored until needed.

Mashing:

The next critical stage for the grain on its way to becoming beer is the mashing process.  In this phase, the grain is mixed with water and heated through a range of temperatures and times to suit the brew.  The mashing process resumes the starch to sugar conversion as the dormant enzymes burst back into activity in the aqueous and thermal environment of the mash.  The range of sugars produced in this step is responsible for the overall body of the brew and exerts a major influence on the ultimate flavor of the beer.  The mashing process affords tremendous potential control for the home brewer.  It determines the complex sugars that will be available for fermentation.  Mashing requires reasonable temperature control but is well worth looking into if you are going to take the next step towards perfection.

Mashing is not difficult, it’s actually quite fun.  I haven’t mashed my own malt since the late 70’s but when I did, it made a world of difference.  These days, being equipped with only a woodstove for cooking, I opt not to mash my own malt anymore.  For me, it would mean judicious monitoring of the temperature; moving the mash around on the stove top so as to keep it from over or under heating and hanging around the stove for the several hours it takes to complete the starch to sugar conversion.  Worse than that, it would mean cleaning up a sticky mess if I have a brain freeze and the mash boils over onto the woodstove and ultimately sticking to the floor.  I also foresee the likelihood of lighting my pants on fire through intimate contact with my primitive but cozy thermal environment of choice.  Nah, I may be a slave to my animals and morning coffee, but I refuse to become a slave to the wort.  Hence, I opt for brewing with malt extract.  It is simpler, less of a mess, no hot pants, and still lots of choices.   

Malt Extract

The malt extract is a refined malt syrup that has already gone through the mashing stage.  It does not require any ubiquitous temperature control beyond making sure the wort doesn’t boil over or scorch; and this heating cycle is much shorter, closer to the order of magnitude of my attention span.  It is a syrupy-thick liquid made by commercial evaporation of the mash liquid.  The downside is that there are only so many different kinds of malt extracts so some recipes for particular beers or ales maybe a little more difficult but not impossible to achieve.  And for those of us that really like to experiment, there are more things that get thrown into the mix to ultimately establish the character of your home brew.

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