The Journeying Engineer

So… after 15 days, just a day over the recommended 2 weeks of fermentation, I transferred the beer to bottles. Another 2 weeks should pass before I can refrigerate and finally, enjoy the beer! Before transferring to the bottles, I added priming sugar. I initially thought of using brown sugar, but decided on using refined sugar instead. 2 teaspoons, not too precise though I still weighed each dose, were added to each bottle.

Speaking of bottles…

Sorry beer mates, I used soft drink bottles for now. Haha! Let me upgrade later when I get the hang of this. But to justify the use of such bottles: we know that these are rated for pressurized drinks as soft drinks are carbonated. So an added layer of protection is to cover these bottles to keep from light as carbonation occurs. Then I guess fast consumption of the beer afterwards? 😀

Side note: One of the bottles is an amber beer bottle. I bought beer in Alaska in 2018, and decided to take home the container as souvenir. Shout out to Three Bears Alaska! Ah, memories.

I tasted the beer so far, and without the priming sugar, it is already good for me. It might be too bitter for others though. I personally like bitter beer, but the final taste is still open till this carbonation phase is done. I am yet to know how much priming sugar would be left and how it contributes to the taste. The wait should be worth it (fingers crossed).

A concern about the final taste: if you watched the video, I wasn’t too careful with bottling. I feel like I aerated the beer significantly.

And as the carboy glass fermenter was free; I cleaned it up and started another batch! I just kicked off the brewing of dark beer, using Carafa Type 2 malt. I have a preference towards dark beer, so I really want to be lucky this time. I’m kinda pushing luck though, as I still got hops from the same package I ordered (the one with expiry date of 12/15/20). Well, it passed the smell and sight test, LOL. I really don’t want to waste those precious hops. So the final decision of buying new hops will be made after 4 weeks, hahaha!

I like how I sort of got the hang of it though, so I brewed my second batch faster. I mean, faster in between the stages. Notes for this second batch:

• I evaporated less water by the end, so there’s over a gallon of wort left. The advantage though is I get to have the excess measured for density. And I get to taste it too.
• Density: ~1.027 g/mL.
• Taste: this is dark, like coffee, and add the taste of hops and we have quite a bitter wort. I’m looking forward to the taste after fermentation.
• Also during the open boiling, the smell of the hops is not as strong as the first batch. It could be the effect of getting from the same pack of hops (already opened and “expired”).

At the time of this writing, I have at least 7 days left before I can taste the first batch of beer, my very first home brew. Then bottling of this second batch, dark beer, will follow. Ahhh, I’m excited!