Irene slightly altered my plans for bottling my first batch of beer. The two week mark was this past Saturday, but we were scheduled to be away, so my goal was to bottle Monday night after we got back. Well, Irene came and cancelled our trip plus knocked out our power. By Tuesday, we still had no power and had moved the trip back a week, so it was either bottle Tuesday night or wait another week until I had another shot. I did not want to let the beer sit on the yeast cake that long, so decided to bottle by candlelight Tuesday night.
Everything went very smoothly. It took about 1.5 hours to clean and sanitize all the equipment, including 3 dozen 22oz bottles. When I opened the fermentation bucket I was pleased that the beer actually smelled good and had a nice dark amber color.
First I prepared a mixture of sugar water and put it into the bottling bucket. Then I siphoned the beer into the bottling bucket, leaving the trub behind. The beer in the bottling bucket was quite free of sediment, so that is a good sign for the clarity of the finished product.
Next I used the bottle filler and spigot to fill the bottles - in all I got 27.5 22oz bottles - right around what I was expecting. Hopefully things will carbonate nicely and the beer should be ready to drink in a couple more weeks!
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