Beer Making: Part 3

Apr
8

2007

When the beer has aged in the carboy for about 7-11 days and it has clarified, it is ready to bottle. The beer will clarify when all the inactive yeast has settled to the bottom of the carboy as sediment:

Getting Ready to Bottle the Beer

Before bottling the beer you have to add priming sugar. The purpose of the priming sugar is to give the remaining active yeast a chance to give off carbon dioxide which will carbonate the beer in the bottle. You have to add the priming sugar into the beer, but you don’t want to stir up the sediment in the carboy, so it is best to transfer the beer back into the fermenter by siphoning only the clarified beer while leaving the sediment in the bottom of the carboy. This requires a clean, sanitized fermenter and Auto-Siphon. You will also need clean, sanitized bottles so the next logical step is to fill the fermenter with cleaner and sanitizer and use the solution to clean and sanitize the bottles and all the bottling utensils while you’re at it.

Some homebrewers use B-Brite – a cleaning and sanitizing product available from homebrew suppliers. One advantage to using B-Brite is that it is a simple, one-step process. This time I used two products – a cleaner and a sanitizer. Here’s a shot of the cleaner next to the fermenter:

Follow the directions and pay attention to the safety warnings. Use precautions when handling these chemicals … especially avoid contact with your eyes!!

Fill the fermenter with cleaner:

Clean all the utensils and the Auto-Siphon … and this time clean the filler tube. The filler tube is a special apparatus with a valve on the end that fills the bottle when pressed against the bottom of the inside of the bottle. You will attach this to the end of the siphon tubing when you are ready to bottle the beer.