Prior to bottling your homebrewed goodness, it’s important to take a gravity reading two days in a row. You wanna make sure the gravity has stabilized and that the beer has stopped fermenting before you bottle. A beer that’s still fermenting in a bottle may explode, which is messy and dangerous.
Grant demonstrates here with his clone of Magic Hat’s #9:
Jeff brings the hammer down
FuzzyBrew and friends gathered in my kitchen last week to bottle two of the three batches we brewed a couple weeks ago. Jeff bottled his oatmeal stout last weekend, so we had left to bottle the brown ale and the Magic Hat #9 clone. Early in the day Mike bought another bottling bucket — this was necessary so each brew would have ample time to settle after being racked from the carboy.
This was especially important for the #9 clone — three pounds of apricot puree went into the beer for secondary fermentation and we wanted as little of it as possible ending up in the bottles. Excess apricot can go bad and continue to change the flavor of the beer over time.
We rack our beers from carboys with an autosiphon, an inexpensive little gadget that makes life so much easier. It takes one pump to get started and then will transfer the beer sans-hands. We use a sold-separately clip to hold the siphon in the mouth of the carboy.
We decided to rack the #9 twice — once to another carboy and then again to the bottling bucket. For the first racking, I started the siphon about halfway down the carboy, and as the level of the beer approached the end of the siphon, I would lower it an inch or two.
Essentially, I did this to better control at what level the siphon was pulling beer from. The carboy had a few inches of apricot on the bottom, and I wanted to make damn sure I transferred as little as possible to the second carboy. This worked better than expected. I saw no sediment transfer through the siphon — it’s the most-clear and light beer we’ve brewed yet. After close to three hours we transferred the beer from that carboy to the bottling bucket. We used a hop bag to filter any remaining apricot, but it was completely unnecessary. It tastes like it’s going to be pretty good.
While the #9 sat, we bottled Mike’s brown ale. It’s going to be fantastic. Can’t wait.
We also sampled the first bottle of Jeff’s Sublimely Self-Righteous ale clone, which we bottled a day shy of three weeks ago. Man o man, it’s going to be tasty. It hasn’t really carbonated much yet, but the malt and hops already present are magical.
First, a preface.
Just a few weeks ago, before the launch of FuzzyBrew.com, we were sweating buckets in 100-degree heat in Jeff Marvin’s garage.
It was so hot that Grant nearly passed out. (See image to left)
But there was beer to make. 10 gallons, in fact.
Half the beer was an American Stout that we brewed for the Cooper-Young Regional Beerfest in October. The other was a recipe Grant found online for a clone of Ska Brewing Co.’ s Modus Hoperandi.
The Modus clone called for 3.5 lbs. of U.S. two-row malt, 1 lbs. caramel 120°L malt, .75 lbs. wheat malt and 7.5 lbs. pale malt.
The goodness, however, came from a slew of Centennial, Cascade and Columbus hops pellets.
For hops, the recipe called for:
1 oz. Centennial Pellets (9%) – 90 min
0.33 oz. Centennial Pellets (9%) – 30 min.
0.66 oz. Cascade Pellets (5%) – 30 min.
0.66 oz. Columbus Pellets (12%) – 5 min.
0.66 oz. Cascade Pellets (5%) – 5 min.
1.0 oz. Columbus Pellets (12%) – 0 min.
2.0 oz. Cascade Pellets (5%) – 0 min.
1.5 oz. Columbus Pellets (12%) – dry
3.0 oz. Cascade Pellets (5%) – dry
Despite the heat, brew day was a success — two carboys full of yummy beer.
That brings us to Wednesday night, and bottling of the Modus Hoperandi clone. First, we siphoned the beer from the carboy into the bottling bucket, as show below.
We sanitized all bottles, surfaces and equipment. And divided up the bottling duties into prepping bottles/adding carb drops, filling bottles and capping. It took about an hour to bottle 4.5 gallons.
All the while we sampled some interesting beers — a raisin-infused Dogfish Head Raison D’Etre, an amber ale in the Magic Hat Hex and a wheaty Magic Hat Odd Notion.
Nearly 1.5 inches of hop residue was left over at the bottom of the carboy, and it smelled glorious. We had a taste of the Modus clone, and it was quite promising. Cheers to a good night.
