Bottling takes a while

52 bottles of beer on the floor,
52 bottles of beer...
take one down, pass it around....

blah blah blah.

Here's the thing, if you ever make your own beer. You have to save bottles from beer you've already drunk at the house. And they've got to be the kind that aren't twist-offs....you need the good kind of beer bottle, because they've got to be able to be re-sealed with a new cap.

So the process involves this....preparing a disinfecting solution. This is easy....a heaping teaspoon of some chlorine-containing chemical to two gallons of water. Then you rinse out all the bottles. Having done this before, I've learned the key is to rinse out the beer bottles once you're done drinking from them. If you leave any beer at the bottom, or worse -- the natural sediment that a non-filtered beer will have in it, then you're going to have to deal with more mold growing at the bottom. It's nothing that the chlorine can't kill, but sometimes it's very hard to scrape the gunk out with a typical bottle brush. And also, you'll want to change the water you use more often in the rinsing out. The chlorine solution dries in about half an hour or so, which is fine since it takes about an hour to wash out 50-55 bottles.

Next step is priming the beer. If you drink what's been fermenting, it's going to taste okay, be room temperature, and flat. So you need to do some priming -- add fresh sugar to the beer to give the yeast something new to feed on. The sugar comes in the form of powdered malt extract, dissolved in water. It's very easy to have the water boil over while you heat it to dissolve it. And it sucks to have hot caramelizing liquid on your stove. My stove is flat-top electric, which is probably better than a gas range would be for such an accident. Add the priming solution to the beer, and start bottling.

This is easy enough, with a siphoning hose started by a small hand pump. It's advisable to leave a good inch of space from the top of the bottle to avoid caps blowing off from the built up carbon dioxide. Even though the tube's got a spigot on it, it's easier just to go quickly from bottle to bottle. At the bottom of the 5-gallon glass carboy, there's usually grain sediment that you won't want to try to siphon into a bottle. But if you want to strain it into a bowl or something, you can try for a buzz from the flat runoff.

Capping is slow. My dad's bottle capper probably comes from the 1970s, so I have no idea if capping technology or whatever has been increased. All I do is put the open cap into a magnetic holding spot in the capper, and place it over the bottle, and slowly pull down the handles of the capper, kinda like working with a corkscrew. If you're out of alignment, you can break the bottle, though. (A reason to wash more bottles than you might need, too....just pour the beer from the broken bottle into an extra.) It seems like the leverage is best when having the bottle on the floor, so working from a chair can save wear and tear on your knees.

In a couple of weeks, the beer's plenty carbonated enough, and then you can stick it in the fridge. Just remember not to drink it from the bottle -- there's always sediment from the grain at the bottom that shouldn't be re-mixed into the beer. Pour it into a glass and rinse out the bottom quarter of an inch or so. (especially if you plan to reuse the bottles another time, to avoid excess mold) And I'm told aging the beer improves the flavor, although I usually just drink them until they're gone in lieu of buying beer at the store.

Anyway, the flat room temperature stuff was promising....should be a worthy entry in my dad's Octoberfest in a couple of weeks.