Bottling Day, sort of

Yesterday was bottling day for my "Practice Pale Ale" batch that I'm making with ingredients on hand but with my new brewing equipment kit. The wort has been fermenting for 7 days and with no further fermentation visible, I decided it was time to bottle. I may have been too quick but read on.

After sanitizing the bottling tub and the bottles and other equipment, I sat the carboy with 2 gals of brew on my counter and positioned the bottling tub beneath it.

First I put some dry ice into the bottling tub to fill it with CO2 and to drive out the oxygen, I read that somewhere.

Notice the mix of sanitized bottles I have sitting in the big pot in the background.

After a few fits and stats, I got the siphon going using an air filter to blow air into the carboy.

Anyway I measured the FG and it turned out to be only 1.020 where it should have been 1.010 to 1.015. But I thought it tasted pretty good, the hops were well balanced unlike my previous efforts which screamed "HOPS". I did notice a slight lingering sweetness which further adds to my suspicions of the incomplete fermentation. Oh well, too late to stop now. And anyway the point of this batch was for me to learn to use the brewing equipment it to prepare for a full 5 gal brew I plan to start on after I finish bottling this batch (I'm still looking for a brew kettle).

I should be able to get almost 8 liters from the 2 gal in the fermenter so I prepped a 3 liter used Asahi can, 3-1 liter PET bottles from my Mr Beer set and 6 used Sam Adams bottles. I primed with table sugar ( I didn't have corn sugar) and after filling, I used all except 2 of the Sam Adams bottles. Not too bad. Now I have to wait at least another week for the beer to condition.

Here is a picture of the beer conditioning in the Asahi beer dispenser with the refrigeration and the CO2 turned off.

This setup is great because I can test the beer while condition to see the progress of carbonation, lets hope I don't finish off 3 liters doing the "testing"!.