January, 2006

Do you have a bottle in need of capping? Just let me know and I will be right over to cap it for you. Of course I don’t have any new bottle caps, so you will need to provide your own. I picked this up from ebay for ten bucks plus shipping. This is my first piece of equipment for my home brew set up. Now if someone would only buy me something like this, I would be all set. Although I might be hard pressed to keep up with the capping on that one, perhaps this would be more my speed. And don’t be a spoil sport, I know that I don’t need such complicated equipment to make good beer, I can dream can’t I?

On the home front, the Hefeweizen that Katherine made is fizzy and ready to drink. The IPA that I made is fizzy, but could do with another week or so in the bottle for the beer to absorb the CO2 and for the hops to mellow out a bit. I am still amazed that we turned water, grains, yeast, and some flowers into beer.

Way back on NYE (aka December 31st), Chris, James, Katherine, and I went back up to the Flying Barrel to bottle our newly created beer. Bottling is a relatively simple proces which involves transfering the beer from the fermenting bucket to the bottling bucket with a racking cane. Then the final specific gravity is measured, and a simple formula is used to compute the alcohol content of each beer.

Alcohol percentage by weight equals 76.08 times Original Gravity minus Final Gravity divided by 1.775 minus Original Gravity. It is easier to scribble this down: ABW = 76.08(OG-FG)/(1.775-OG).

The results are:
James’ Guiness-like Stout 4%
Chris’ Mocha Stout 6.1%
Katherine’s Hefeweizen 5.3%
Randy’s Extra Hoppy Pale Ale 7.3%

Once the once you know how many of each beers you need to get your buzz on, you add a bit of corn sugar to the bottling bucket, fill each bottle and cap them. Then the last step is to wait, then wait a bit more, and then wait even more. One week after bottling we still have more waiting until the beer is fully carbonated and ready to drink.

Katherine and I bought some 3/4 inch round sticker to label each of our beers, hers have paw prints, mine have flowers (for the hops!). Now once they hit the fridge we will know which beer we are about to drink.

I got tired of waiting and sampled one of Katherine’s beer. It is good, but will be better in another two weeks.