monday night, my love and i headed back to the place where we had a home brewing course a few weeks ago. during that night (you can read about it here), we brewed a big ole batch of beer with our fearless teacher, kåre. and, now, the beer has been sitting, fermenting, and was ready for tapping! so, it was time to return and get a lesson in bottling beer!
you may have seen that lina and i bottled our own batch of beer about a week or so ago (read about that experience here). so we’ve had a teeny, tiny, tiny bit of experience of bottling. but, needless to say, it did not go as smoothly as monday night’s lesson. hehe.
it was totally worth it to learn how to really do it!
here’s our beer!
time to sanitize everything: a critical, critical part of the process
our first peek!
after measuring our alcohol content level (it’s a 6% abv beer we’ve created), it was time to sample it! and i think it tasted amazing – it’s a sour beer!
then we got back to work adding sugar to the bottles. the sugar is what aids in the carbonation. and you can adjust how bubbly your beer is by how much sugar you have. to find out how much sugar you need to add, you do some sort of complicated math (not really, but our brains weren’t working. hehe). in any case, we figured it out, with kåre’s help!
time to tap the beer + fill the bottles! and kåre did a fabulous job showing us how to do it before putting us to work doing it ourselves.
and finally… capping the bottles.
when we were done with that, we went onto filling a few champagne bottles with our beer and learning how to cork them. then we cleaned up the space and got a ride home from kåre – with all of our beer!
i immediately placed them on the closet shelf where we keep all of our home brewed beer and closed the door to let them sit for two more weeks.
so yes, it’ll be two more weeks of waiting – and then… we are hosting a beer party!!
now, let me remind you of something… this post is purely meant to be entertaining. lina and i are totally rookies at this. we have no real information to give, but we do have our experiences to share. and, until we get better at all of this, that’s what we’re gonna do. we may be able to pass along a few tips, and make you laugh a little, or make you crave some beer for now. but, one day soon, we will be really good at this.
so, we’re gonna keep brewing, continue learning, start creating our own concoctions, and even perhaps enter a brew of our own in a contest next winter!
so, stay tuned… and keep following along. two chicks brewing is on its way!
Very cool!
it’s such a fun thing that we’ve started! 🙂
Very informative post, Liz. I had no idea that sugar was the culprit behind the bubbles. I wish I could be part of this beer party. Let me know when it’s up for grubs in the US. 😉
to be honest, laura, i had no idea about the sugar either before starting this whole endeavor. it would be so much fun for you to join us! and we will definitely keep you posted on when we begin to export. hehe! 😉
This is so awesome! I want a bottle 🙂
Come for a visit + a tasting! 🙂
I’v tasted it. It is simply the best beer you can drink this summer. Still undercarbonated this slightly sour, rye-ish saison make me very happy.
Congratulations!
Kåre
Woo hoo! So glad you liked it. We haven’t had any of ours yet… but I think we will have a little get together with friends this weekend. THANK YOU for all of your help and guidance. You have been an amazing teacher and we are so grateful!