- How to Homebrew Beer
- Homebrew Beer from Kits
- Homebrew Beer from Grain & Hops
- Bottling Homebrew Beer
- Plastic Homebrew Barrelling
- Homebrew Cornelius Keg Systems
- Homebrew Beer Recipes
- Homebrew Books
While I don't normally bottle my beer because it's such a lot of work, if you are making some small batches of high strength beer, it's often the best way. You can either choose crown top bottles or the Grolsch flip top type bottle, I prefer the Grolsch style, if you go for crown tops, you'll need a crown topper too:
After making your beer put it in a barrel and leave it until it's clear, normally about 2-3 weeks for a standard beer, but if you are making a barley wine, leave it in a barrel for 6 months first. Now syphon it into a clean fermenting vessel getting it off any trub in the barrel. If you're in a hurry to drink it, add a couple of spoons of sugar at this point and stir it well in, I personally prefer not to as though it takes longer to reach condition, you get less muck in your bottles. You can now syphon your beer into the bottles, allow about 2cm headspace and seal the bottles. Now leave them at an ambient temperature until primed which could be 2 weeks if you prime with sugar or 3 months if you don't.
Kelvin
Did not see any mention of adding the priming suger?
Reply: I usually don't use them, if your making beer from scratch via a full mash method, there are enough sugars left in the beer at bottling to prime it you just have to wait a little longer for it to reach conditioning. If you want to add priming sugars, I suggest using a priming sugar calculator eg: http://kotmf.com/tools/prime.php as adding too much will ruin your beer.