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