Bottling Day.

Well today is bottling day. I will be transferring my beer from my fermenter into my bottling bucket. The bottling process is kind of a pain in the ass but its worth it about 2-4 weeks later when the beer is carb'ed and ready to drink. When you bottle you have to add a bit more sugar to the situation because when ready to bottle there isn't enough fermentable sugar left to carbonate the beer. I just use corn sugar because it doesn't impact the flavor and ferments cleanly. I all I have to do for bottling is sanitize about 40 bottles, fill them, cap them and let them sit at room temp for 2-4 weeks. Now since this is a Wheat I want a lot of carbonation. I'll be letting the beer sit at room temp for 4 weeks to make sure its good and carb'ed.

I ultimately plan on switching to all grain and kegging, but right now I have limited space. Extract brewing is just too convenient for apartment brewing to switch. When I move out I will probably start going all grain. All-grain brewing is a bit more advanced than extract. You have to do a mash and then sparge to get the necessary sugars needed to produce the finished beer. Mashing is using very hot water to cause the starches in the grains to convert to fermentable sugars. Sparging is then the act of rinsing all of the sugars off the grains. With all grain you are able to get better tasting beer. Its said that extract beer has a twang to it that all grain does not.

Kegging involves the use of Cornelius kegs which are the stainless steel cylinders that Pepsi used to put their fountain pop in. With kegging you use CO2 to dispense and/or carbonate. I would like to keg because it gets rid of all of those bottles. I would only have to sanitize a keg instead of 40 bottles. Also with force carbonation you don't have to wait as long to drink the finished product. Its a long way away but I still like to have the knowledge ready for when I get ready to make those leaps.