I know I’ve been on a been on a tumblr hiatus, but the blogs will continue to roll.  Even though I have not been putting out tumblr posts, it doesn’t mean that I’ve stopped brewing. This is a pic of the bottles I used when I bottled my Texas Red on August 1st, which means it will be ready for enjoying here shortly.  

As I mentioned in my last post, I bottled my Bavarian Hefeweizen one week after transferring the beer to the secondary fermenter.  I was able to produce produce about 512 ounces or 42 (12 oz.) bottles worth.  I used a mixture of vessels to bottle the beer in:

2 growlers

6 pint flip tops

24 Standard 12 oz. bottles. 

I really enjoyed the bottling tool that was provided in my brewing kit. It really helped to keep my kitchen clean and the process went by a lot faster than I thought it would. After bottling the beers it will just be three weeks (May 6th) until the beer is ready and I really can’t wait. In the mean time, enjoy the pics. 

I worked hard drinking other people’s beer over the past year to get this collection of re-cappable bottles. 

Of my vast collection of bottle, these bottles were selected as the chosen few to be vessels of my first batch. The water jug doesn’t count, it’s just a water jug. 

Got to sanitize everything first. 

I boiled the priming sugar in some water and put it in the bottling bucket first before I transferred the beer fromt the secondary (the big class container).

The first bottle to get filled is this 2 liter growler that I got at North by North West brew pub in Austin. Sorry folks but my dad already called dibs on this one, but I do have a 64 oz. growler from Uncle Billy’s that I also filled. 

Filling the smaller bottles takes a little bit more care and a good eye, as these can get over filled in no time. 

At first I thought I was using the capper wrong because it seemed to easy. However after flipping the bottle over and seeing no leaks, I was reassured that the capper works. 

Here is some of the final product which I look forward to enjoying. Also I plan on possibly redoing the labels to avoid confusion as to who’s beer it is. 

Several weeks ago I transferred the beer to the secondary carboy. I did this after the beer had been fermenting in the primary for about a week. Taking the lid of the plastic fermenting bucket was quite a challenge. I had to resort to using a hammer and flat head screwdriver. Eventually brain and brawn over came the stubborn lid and the beer was transferred in no time. However another worry had a risen the next day, because I did not notice any movement in my fermentation lock. Although, as luck would have it, the experts at my local home brew supplier told me that this is normal and my worry was quickly diminished.
After a week in the secondary I decided to bottle the beers, which I did this past weekend.