I confess
I enjoy bottling. I"ll blast King-X & Heep while putting a few down.
I rack off the trub. Add sugar so the beer gets purged. Yeah, gotta wait till it clears up and settle but I’m not in a hurry.
+1 to all of those. But you omitted the aesthetic advantage of bottling: bottles are much prettier than kegs — especially with a nice label or a wax dip or both.
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I confess I basically never precisely figure priming sugar. Bottles ≤ 500 ml get one carb drop or one 3.5-g sachet of sugar. 750-ml bottles get two.
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I measure priming sugar buy gut feeling. 1/4 to 1/3 cup based on how I feel about the beer on the day I bottle. It generally works out fine.
That approach is how I make most brewing decisions and likely part of why I’m thinking about shutting down the brewery. Combined with people being less and less likely to want to drink beer, the lack of those “WOW!” moments I used to have making new beers, and my own weight/health concerns as I get older it gets more difficult to make a 2 hour drive (each way) to resupply my ingredient inventory. Decisions will need to be made when the bags of grain run out later this year.
It will be a sad day when I actually shut it all down. Until then… PROST!!!
Paul
No doubt bottling is more time consuming, but I have a process to spread cleaning out over time.
I spend 2-4 minutes cleaning a few bottles at a time, rather than 20-30 minutes to clean all at once.
I clean the day I drink them (4-8 bottles at a time).
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I do a quick rinse to remove the dregs.
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Fill the bottle about inch from the top and add PBW solution (I keep an ultra high concentration in a squirt bottle under the sink). I let them sit overnight (or whenever I get to them).
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Hit with a bottle brush and empty.
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Rinse and store upside down in a small bucket.
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When dry, store in a cardboard case box.
Bottling day takes an hour total. I do a quick rinse and then sanitize.
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I started bottling in 1996 and have started kegging in 1999, but stopped again. Keg and beer line maintenance is just too much of a hassle for me. We make many different beers and can serve them from our walk in cooler at will.
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I frequently use rice in my German Style Biers. Nobody would know if I didn’t tell them.
I don’t use any chemical sanitizer in my kegs other than high temperature H2O. It just works better.
My best beers have used my homegrown hops. Air drying w/o heat produces better hops than commercial kiln dried. Just guess at the Alpha Acid content. It’s probably a little higher than the kiln dried hps.
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For your sins.
Please drink a Liter of Marzen
And
a freshly tapped Kolsh
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I think, sir, you’ve strayed from confessing to bragging. It is a bucket-list item of mine to make my own attempt at a 100-meter beer project.
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and other articles
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Homegrown hops are pretty great. I’ve used up most of mine. For bittering with your homegrown hops, I always say: Take an educated guess as to the alpha acid in your hops. Then aim to brew an American pale ale. If it turns out too bitter for an APA, then it’s an IPA. If it turns out too low in bitterness, call it a blonde ale. If it turns out just right, congrats you succeeded in brewing a pale ale (or maybe a “session IPA”). Tweak your alpha acid guess for the next batch or two. In this way, you’ll learn your alpha acid within 0.2% within about 3 batches… if the hops last that long.
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