Labeling done

Labeling complete. I couldn't resist any longer and decided to open one up tonight.  

I was relieved to see that it was carbonated. I had worried that I killed the yeast and would end up with a flat, low alcohol brew. I noticed that the carbonation is not as strong as commercial beers. I wonder if this is because its home brew or because of any number of possible problems I ran into during the brewing, fermenting, and bottling process. 

Lastly, it has a stronger bitter finish than I expected and less of an alcohol flavor than I expected. This again may just be the recipe or may result from something that I did incorrectly, though I think its just a stronger hop finish than I expected. This hoppyness may fade as I let it age some more. And after fewer than one whole beer I can feel the alcohol already....so I guess it can't be that low in content. Whats this...the bottom of the glass? Time to get another. 

Bottling Complete

Today marks a week that my beer has been fermenting. I spent another great deal of time sanitizing all the equipment and 48 bottles (pain in my ass), siphoned the beer from the fermenting bucket (as you see in the picture below) and into the bottling bucket. 

As I siphoned the beer, I accidentally introduced some air into the tubing twice which exposes the beer to a bit more oxygen then I think is supposed to happen. I hope this won't be a big deal, but its too late to fix it at this point. It'll either be ok or not.

I think I may still be having problems with the hydrometer because both when I brewed the beer and today when bottling I was getting readings that I did not expect. Again I hope this isn't as big of a deal as it currently seems. Today's reading was reporting less alcohol content than I was expecting. I also wonder if this reading is correct if it has anything to do with the first day of fermentation being relatively warm, before I moved it to a cooler location. 

Capping was easy and quick. Labeling will follow fermentation. 

I now have another week of fermentation in the bottle followed by between 0 days and 3 weeks for conditioning. It'll be a test of will power.

Jay

Fermenation of Batch #1

The airlock was bubbling like crazy on Sunday morning and continued all day long. I assume it also bubbled well into Sunday night and Monday but by the time I got home Monday evening it had either ceased entirely or slowed to an amount that was no longer noticeable at a glance. I had expected it to bubble and ferment through tonight (Wednesday) but it looks like that didn't happen.  Since this is my first batch I don't yet know if this is ok or will mean that the beer will not turn out right in the end.  For now, I will just move forward as I would have otherwise.

Another possible issue that I ran into that I hope ends up being nothing much: the first 12-18 hours of fermentation I had the bucket sitting on the kitchen counter.  In the winter, we keep the thermostat at 68 degrees so I figured it should be well within range of what ale yeast requires. However, the temperature hovered around 76-78 degrees the whole time.  On Sunday evening I moved the bucket (will moving the bucket disturb anything?) to the floor in a corner near the kitchen. By the next day the temperature had cooled to 66-68 degrees as I had wanted.

Bottling is planned for Saturday after allowing for a few more days of settling. I can't wait...too bad it'll be a few more weeks still after that before first taste.