Homebrewing Blog and Resource

The hobby of homebrewing beer

Bottling Homebrew

Oh yeah. The really fun part of the whole homebrewing experience. I’m being sarcastic. Note the italics.

Over the weekend, I did my best to wash my bottles. I had a few packets of PBW so I mixed them with water to make a cleaning solution. I took my bottle brush and scrubbed the insides well. I let them air dry in preparation for my bottling night (last night).

I used iodophor as my sanitizer. I made a solution so I could sanitize my bottling bucket, siphon, tubing, bottle filler, and all the bottles and caps.

I let everything soak in the iodophor solution for about a half an hour last night. The instructions recommend a two minute contact time…I wanted to make sure.

Once the soaking was done, I let everything air dry. While stuff was drying, I made up my priming solution. I had some corn sugar (3/4 of a cup) and I boiled it with a cup of water. John Palmer wrote in How To Brew that two cups of water should be used. I read that after the boil…and I made a decision that it didn’t really matter…yay me.

I siphoned the beer from the fermenter to the bottling bucket…doing my best not to splash any of it. I poured my priming solution into the filling bucket…as gently as I could.

Once the bottling bucket was filled, I started bottling and capping bottles. I filled several 12 oz bottles for the Sam Adams Homebrew Competition. Now I have to go back to my other post and find out what else I have to do to enter.

I took a final gravity reading…I am calling that 1.015…which is higher than my target of 1.012. Close enough.

All in all, bottling went off without a hitch. I even harvested some yeast from the bottom of the fermenter. Now it’s time to wait.

Final Gravity ReadingBottling Bucket

P.S. I tasted the sample I took for the final gravity reading. Any fear I had about the “grapefruit” smell I was getting from the yeast starter and airlock has been subsided. There was no detectable off-flavors from the sample. No taste of vinegar, which was what I was fearing.

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4 Comments

  1. What yeast did you use? I recently did a Pale Ale with Wyeast 1056 and got a noticeable grapefruit finish in my bottled product. That has slowly subsided over the course of two months. I actually liked it. It was a very pleasant finish, but I’m a big fan of grapefruit anyways.

  2. I used WLP051 California Ale V Yeast…from the description, it’s a clean tasting yeast but fruitier than WLP001. I think Wyeast 1056 is similar to WLP001.

    I have brewed with WLP001 before and it had no scent at all, but the WLP051 definitely had some grapefruit coming off of it. I thought it smelt pleasant too and I was relieved to find the first tastings pleasant as well.

  3. Christian

    The grapefruit smell could have been from the hops. What hops did you use late boil?

  4. I used Glacier hops in my boil. Not sure if the smell was coming from the yeast or the hops or both. The beer came out great though.

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