Blackout Stout – Brew Day 3

Today we bottled.

At the end of Brew Day 2 we hoisted our secondary carboy onto an elevated surface so that it would settle and not need to be disturbed when we bottled.

Everything was meticulously sanitized again – this time including the bottles. We have opted for  EZ Cap bottles in both the 500 ml and 1 L sizes. We settled on brown glass as it protects the beer from light which is not good for a finished beer. Other options were clear or green.

These are the bottles: http://www.ezcap.net/

We love them – they work very well and are very easy to bottle (and open!).

Before bottling we racked the beer into a bottling bucket (just a big plastic bucket) where we had already poured the priming sugar solution. See it here on top of the filing cabinet:

To make the priming sugar solution we just added the sugar to two cups of boiling water. This step is necessary to achieve carbonation in the bottle.

The yeast will feast on this sugar in the bottle and create some gas as a byproduct. This will be the carbonation in the beer. The yeast will then settle again and create that bit of sediment common to home brew.

So to bottle we just had the siphon hose with an attachment that I forget the name of. Basically what this thing does is attach to the end of the siphon hose and once the siphon has started it won’t actually come out the end of the hose through this attachment until you press it up against a surface.

So you just press this to the bottom of your beer bottle and watch it fill up. When it reaches the level you want you just lift the end off the bottom. Very easy.

Pictures of the process:

Our final gravity reading I believe was 1.059 so with the starting value of 1.010 we estimate that our beer finished at an alcohol by volume of about 4.9%. I am trying to find the paper with this information to get a more accurate value.

Our next batch will be more carefully documented.

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