Bottling at Home

Our very first, fully/actually brewed at home, homebrew is ready for bottling!

[And there was much rejoicing]

First thing we did was run 2 cases of bottles through the dishwasher, to make sure we got any/all sediment out of them (would hate for all of that hard work to lead to skunky beer...)

All lined up and ready to go

Oh! and more good news, we got the auto-syphon working!  Check out it in action (note the awesome multi-tasking as well...watching Sunday Football and beer stuffs, not a bad weekend eh?)

Beer entering the bottling bucket

Bottling station prepped and ready

Leftovers in the carboy

Ok kids, full disclosure, we had a little brain fart with the priming sugar.  We forgot to add it to some water and heat it up BEFORE putting in the bucket.  Above is what happened when we put the priming sugar directly into the bucket in its solid/powdered form.  I must say, it had a nice creamy head (pictured above), almost like a Guinness, but turns out we weren't supposed to do that!  Fortunately, we went a little light on the priming sugar (in order to avoid over-carbonation like our last 2 batches), so we wound up adding a little more after disolving it in water properly.  Should be interesting to see how to turns out.

In the meantime, safety first!  The two cases of hot-tiddie ale are currently sitting in the spare bathroom shower, just in case we have any explosions or other mishaps.  Cleaning beer off the walls can't be fun, and frankly, I don't want to find out.

Taste test to come in a few weeks.  Will the priming-sugar-brain-fart be a non-issue?  Did we accidentally over-carbonate AGAIN?  Will the beer be totally flat?  Only one way to find out...