bottling an IPA

General Homebrew Discussion
1

Any suggestions on how to bottle a competition IPA? Can’t force carbonate.
Kelsey McNair (Hop Fu!) suggests:

  • use oxygen barrier caps (can’t find them in Belgium)
  • purge bottles with CO2
  • 2.4 volumes CO2
  • bottling high (i.e. fill up almost to the rim)
  • cap on foam (don’t know what that means)
2

It looks like you’re going to be bottle conditioning by adding some sugar before you bottle. His directions are for someone bottling from a keg probably with a beer gun.

  1. Those caps aren’t that important because I think you’re going to be drinking this fairly fresh
  2. If you don’t have CO2 this won’t happen
  3. You can do this with the right amount of sugar
  4. This would be to limit Oxygen, but if you’re bottle conditioning this won’t matter much since the yeast might scavenge some O when consuming the sugar
  5. This happens when you bottle from a keg that is already carbonated