Last night I moved the beer from the carboy (giant glass bottle where it ferments) into the bottles. The beer at this point was totally flat, and very dry tasting, but my book says that’s the way it’s supposed to be so I’m not too worried. The only thing I’m worried about is that it tasted a bit too hoppy for a hefewiesen (which is what I was trying to make) Now we just wait 2-4 weeks for the extra sugar I added to get turned into bubbles by the yeast, and for all the flavors to develop, then we can drink it!
I meant to get cool pictures of the process of brewing and bottling, but I couldn’t find the camera on either occasion. As a consolation I present you with this picture of the beer all wrapped up:
And for the interested here is my ghetto brewing log:
beer log
batch 1.
brew date: 13 jan 2007“hefewiezen ale kit”
6 lbs. Wheat dry malt extract
1.5 oz Tettnanger hops 4.0 alpha acid
.75 oz Tettnanger hops
1 whirlfloc tablet
3/4 cup corn sugarput duct tape on 6 gal carboy marking 1-5 gallons
began heating 3 gal water 11:30
at 12:00 added bittering hops
at 12:30 added irish moss tablet
at 12:55 added aromatic hops
at 1:00 put in bath tub to cool,
added a gallon cold water to wort
at 1:35 was at 80 degrees, funneled into 6.5 gallon carboy, added gallon cold water, put on fermentation lock21 jan – all sign of foam on top is gone
22 jan, 8pm – bottling
dipped the 24 (new) 12oz bottles
siphoned out of the carboy basically until the top of the layer of sediment, although there was a lot more liquid in there… it seemed like the right thing to do. once it was in the bucket, added 3/4 cup corn sugar
dissolved in 1 cup boiling water (then cooled) for carbonation. Siphoned it into 24 12oz bottles and 12 22 oz bottles, for a total of 4.3 gallons of beer. Seems shy of my 5 gallon recipe, but it could be that I overfilled
the bottles or was too conservative about leaving the sediment in the carboy and lost beer with it.