bottling day: amber ale 2/7/2008
The past few days have been pretty productive, as far as beer related activities go. Late last week, I bottled my wheat ale and last night I bottled my amber ale.
If you don't know by now, I've been posting pictures of my brews on Flickr under the name BierBrewer. Of course, Paulbeer was already taken. So instead of using a crazy name like Paulbeer38596748230, I decided to go with something a little different.Amber Ale: I sterilized about a case and a half of 12 ounce bottles last night and also one 5L mini keg. I was going to do two 5L minis but since we are going on vacation in a few weeks, I want to make sure I can bring along some of my homebrew.
The mini kegs take about 4 weeks or so to carbonate compared to the 1 to 2 weeks for bottles. They are pretty easy to clean and fill. If they condition as good as a bottle, I'll be very pleased.
Since you need different amounts of priming sugar for mini kegs and bottles, I had to transfer the beer twice. Thanks to Google calculator, I was able to easily determine the proper amount of priming sugar per batch.
Priming Sugar Measurements
1 x 5L mini keg - 1 1/3
tablespoons (or 4 teaspoons) of priming sugar.
3.5 gallons for bottling - 8.5 tablespoons of priming sugar. (It was actually
8.4 but I rounded up)
I've done some research and found that the average amount of priming sugar for
a 5 gallon batch for mini kegging is 1/3 of a cup. For bottles, I typically use
3/4 of a cup. Keep in mind this is for priming sugar. If you use
The color of the beer is a deep amber. The lower left tile in the mosaic shows
just how dark it really is. The lower right pic looks like I'm siphoning oil
out of a can. I should name it 10W-40 :) As the beer was transferring into the
bucket, you could see the oils from the hops mixing in with the beer.
The aroma was very nice. Noticeable amounts of hops without any grassy
undertones. I was a little concerned about that since I let it dry hop for
longer than I originally planned.
Bottling was a breeze last night. I was able to fill 32 x 12 ounce bottles and
have enough left over to fill the hydrometer tube. The fact that I didn't use
enough water accounts for the deep amber color and the lesser than normal
amount of beer. Oh well, I'm happy with the way it is turning out. I sampled a
small amount and I think it will be very good.
We'll know in a week or so!
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I ve been homebrewing beer and mead for about 15 years. Here' some how to advi Read More
I love the mini-kegs but can't find them. Where did you get them and the CO2 tap for them? Great job!
I noticed on your fliker site that you mentioned it takes 4 weeks to carbonate your beer. I don't know if you know it but there is a way to force carbonate your beer in the tap a draft system if you want to do it. It only takes about a week. Check out this link. They don't include the directions with the system so I found them here. http://www.sturmanbg.com/products/Directions.pdf