Beer No. 1: Bottling

Time to bottle the beer. I syphoned off the contents of the brewing barrel into PET Coke bottles. The brewing barrel is rather too big for such a small batch, making it very difficult to leave the sediment behind - a demijohn might be better next time. So I was forced to leave a bit behind, resulting in a yield of just under 4 litres. The 2L bottles are also fairly useless for small batches, as once they are opened the pressure will be lost. So I need to start collecting 1L or even 500ml bottles.

I added 1 tsp of sugar per litre of beer to the bottles, then put them to mature for about 6 weeks. I also took a sample for gravity measurement and tasting. The final gravity (FG) was 1.001, which corresponds to an alcohol content of about 3.2%. As I hoped, the alcohol took the edge off the bitter taste, although it's still quite hoppy. It had no body to speak of, but hopefully the priming sugar will add some sparkle and improve that.

But so far, not bad at all for a first attempt.


Syphoning in progress


Guess which one of these came from the bottom of the barrel