Bottling Day!

Almost a month ago we cooked up our first batch of beer and set it to fermenting.  Yesterday was bottling day...I'm so proud!

Step one: clean and sanitize everything (I think this is always step one).  We had kept the sanitizing solution from brewing day, so we just used it.

Bottle caps...and here are our bottles (they came with the kit, but we're going to start our own bottle collection).

I boiled up the priming sugar and added it to the bottling bucket.  The sugar causes the fermented liquid to carbonate.  We then siphoned the liquid out of the fermenting bucket and into the bottling bucket using an auto-siphon.  If you've never used one, they're very nifty, although until we figured out how it worked (we're like monkeys with tools), there was nothing "auto" about it.  But once we got it working, we were golden.  Here's what the fermenting bucket looked like after:

I know it looks pretty gross, but man, did it smell good!  I need to find out if there are any repurposing options for this stuff...bread...cookies...something?  In the end, we just tossed it.  Maybe next batch.

Once all the fermented liquid was in the bottling bucket, we let it sit for a couple of hours so any residual sediment would settle.  We went to lunch and then to the grocery store...where, in addition to our list, we bought beer...what is wrong with us.  Oh, wait.  Nothing!!

We returned and started bottling.

And voila!

Awwww.  Our first beer.  The red contraption behind it is a manual bottle capper...pretty cool.

We had enough beer in the bucket to fill all of our 2 cases of bottles, plus two additional bottles.  We could have filled a couple more but, alas...no extra bottles in the house - Joe had taken the recycling out a couple of days before.

In about two weeks, we'll have our first tasting.  Our next batch depends on the success of this one.  If this Amber is good, we'll try something else.  If not, we'll go back to the drawing board and try another Amber.  Stay tuned!!