Bottling. Oh how I hate thee. Seriously. What a pain in the ass to clean, sanitize, fill and cap 52 bottles for a batch. And for this batch I even cheated and bought new bottles instead of recycling commercial bottles and refilling them. Kegging would have taken less than 30 minutes from start to clean up. Bottling? Close to 2 hours.
The East Valley Homebrew group had scheduled Dec 9th as the day to swap all of our brews. This was due to one of the members taking a sample of each brew to Omaha and swapping them for a sample of their brews.
In my haste (laziness) I guess I didn't check the exact time of the swap. I woke up Sunday morning and started cleaning the garage. Finished that around 11 and then cleaned up and went in to bottle. I haven't bottled anything but mead in a few years so finding all the pieces and sanitizing them took much longer than it should have.
After I make a quick lunch while letting the bottles, caps, transfer lines, etc. soak in sanitizer I started to fill bottles with the help of my gorgeous (if not very happy about it) brew wife. We're about half done and my phone buzzes. Text message from a member of the brew group asking where we're at.
"Huh?!?! I'm at home, bottling in preparation for tonights bottle swap. Where are you? "
"At the bottle swap waiting for you. It's 1:30, you were supposed to be here at 1 and people are wanting to leave but need your brew first."
Oh crap! into hyper-mode. Send the wife in to shower, and start capping like crazy. 30 minutes later we're out the door with the label file emailed to myself so I can run into the copy store and print off the labels. Scissors and a glue stick in hand.
Get to the copy store and what a mess. There's 3 employees and they are all working on some sort of project for a customer. They wave me over to the DIY section and tell me that what I'm looking for will be super fast. 15 minutes and 10 copies later (and $9.50 something) I'm out the door with my 10 copies in hand. Brew wife cutting out the labels while we drive.
So, we finally make it to the brew swap with all the bottles, only 2 hours late... with flat, warm beer. Go me!
After sampling all the other brews I'm blown away by the brew skill among the members of our group. From bourbon beers, to wine soaked oak beers, to golden strong ales. All were fantastic and not a bad beer in the bunch.
I'm looking forward to trying the rest of the batch over the coming weeks and to doing something as a group concept again.
The East Valley Homebrew group had scheduled Dec 9th as the day to swap all of our brews. This was due to one of the members taking a sample of each brew to Omaha and swapping them for a sample of their brews.
In my haste (laziness) I guess I didn't check the exact time of the swap. I woke up Sunday morning and started cleaning the garage. Finished that around 11 and then cleaned up and went in to bottle. I haven't bottled anything but mead in a few years so finding all the pieces and sanitizing them took much longer than it should have.
After I make a quick lunch while letting the bottles, caps, transfer lines, etc. soak in sanitizer I started to fill bottles with the help of my gorgeous (if not very happy about it) brew wife. We're about half done and my phone buzzes. Text message from a member of the brew group asking where we're at.
"Huh?!?! I'm at home, bottling in preparation for tonights bottle swap. Where are you? "
"At the bottle swap waiting for you. It's 1:30, you were supposed to be here at 1 and people are wanting to leave but need your brew first."
Oh crap! into hyper-mode. Send the wife in to shower, and start capping like crazy. 30 minutes later we're out the door with the label file emailed to myself so I can run into the copy store and print off the labels. Scissors and a glue stick in hand.
Get to the copy store and what a mess. There's 3 employees and they are all working on some sort of project for a customer. They wave me over to the DIY section and tell me that what I'm looking for will be super fast. 15 minutes and 10 copies later (and $9.50 something) I'm out the door with my 10 copies in hand. Brew wife cutting out the labels while we drive.
So, we finally make it to the brew swap with all the bottles, only 2 hours late... with flat, warm beer. Go me!
After sampling all the other brews I'm blown away by the brew skill among the members of our group. From bourbon beers, to wine soaked oak beers, to golden strong ales. All were fantastic and not a bad beer in the bunch.
I'm looking forward to trying the rest of the batch over the coming weeks and to doing something as a group concept again.
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