IPA Bottling... a success!

What a strange and beautiful sight, a dishwasher full of empty beer bottles. This can only mean that it's bottling day once again. We had waited almost three weeks while the beer gurgled away in our spare bedroom, as the yeast turned the wort into beer. I have to admit that we were pretty nervous after the last disastrous batch. Cracking the lid on the fermenter, we couldn't help but wonder if we had actually made beer or if we'd made another, rather expensive, bucket of undrinkable bacteria water.


Now, for anyone who hasn't brewed before, the picture below might not look very appetizing. (Is that a ring of sewage around the top of that bucket?!?) In reality, this is exactly what we were looking for. More importantly the aroma smelled like...well it smelled like beer!


The nifty little contraption that you see sticking out of the top of the bucket is autosiphon that Erin got me for Christmas. Definitely an excellent gift as it made the bottling process so much easier. We used it for the first time with this batch and it did a good job of taking a little bit of the comedy out of what is usually a pretty haphazard process.

Here's a shot of me transferring our new brew into the bottling bucket. That smirk on my face is actually bittersweet, because at this point I'm pretty sure that we've made something delicious, but I know that we have to wait another two weeks to drink it.

Happily those two weeks have passed and we've got a really good, hoppy, IPA. This is probably the best brew yet, and it's just made me want to do another. Cheers!