Bottling Home-Brew

This past weekend we got to bottle our first O-Town Brew.  D's home-brew finally finished the fermentation process.  So after beer finishes fermenting in the carboy you add boiled sugar-water to give the yeast a little something more to eat.  

First thing, we had to take D's bottles and sanitize them with some sort of acid + water.  Then the suds have to be rinsed and wiped off of the bottles. We have a pressurized bottle-washer that fits onto the faucet.  It also serves to power-wash the crud out of the bottom of the carboy after we emptied it. It makes the process go very quickly.

Pressurized bottle-washer

Then Yuuki helped us wipe down the outside of the bottles and but them in a case for easy filling. 

Who's my helpful kitty?

D took a suction hose to extract the brew from the carboy where it had been fermenting.  As it drained to the bucket, D mixed in boiled sugar-water.  This is when the brewing corner of the basement begins to smell like beer.  The scottish ale he's made smells quite nice actually.  Also at this point there is all sorts of various solutions/beer spillage on the ground so I'm quite glad we didn't do this in the kitchen. 

beer, sugar-water, bottle caps are meanwhile in sanitizing solution

Draining beer from the carboy

Making sure the sugar-water is evenly mixed in

And then its just a matter of filling the sanitized beer bottles from the bucket, leaving less than an inch of room for air at the top.  Then you press on the bottlecaps.  

D, manning the bottlecap press

One of two cases of home-brewed beer

Now we leave the bottles undisturbed for a week or so, so the yeast has time to eat the sugar and make fizzyness (D says its carbon dioxide, which is forced down into the liquid).  In the meantime I'd love to make some fun labels for our first O-Town Brew.  I guess we could just buy label paper and print a homemade design from the computer.  Have never tried it, but there's a first time for everything.  

Bobby was no help at all. Shiftless layabout!

but clearly adorbs.