Bottling Night at Mildren Brew. Co.

After anxiously waiting and waiting the last two-and-a-half weeks, my beer was finally ready to be bottled. Last night after Spanish class, the ever-helpful Beth assisted me in the process. I really would have been lost at a couple points in the brewing process if it weren't for her mathematical skills. Since I ended up with less beer than I had anticipated, I had to adjust the quantity of the priming sugar we mixed in last night. I would have just eyeballed it if I were on my own, but Beth actually guided me in measuring it all out and doing the proper conversions.

So, I boiled the sugar in a little bit of water and then poured it into an empty and sanitized water jug. The reason for adding the sugar is to give the yeast in the beer a little more to eat on while in the bottle which will create a natural carbonation and up the alcohol percentage a bit. While the sugar was boiling, I dipped all my clean, empty bottles into the sanitized water solution to prepare them for the beer. Next I siphoned out the beer from the fermenter into the jug with the sugar. I gently swirled the sugar into the beer (careful not to swirl too hard as oxygenating the beer can hurt the flavor) and then prepared to begin bottling and capping.

Siphoning the beer

My brew kit came with this neat bottling wand and it's just a narrow tube of plastic with a little tip on the end that when pressed down will release the beer (it's connected to the siphon). So I just put it into the bottle, press down, and the beer starts flowing. When the bottle's full, I pull up and the flow is cut off. Beth set out the empty bottles for me to fill and kindly capped the full ones. She did a great job and I really appreciate her getting into this hobby with me.

Filling the bottles

Once all the bottles were filled and capped, I counted up 31 12-oz. bottles and 1 22-oz. bottle. Not bad! Especially since I ended up with about 40% less than I should have. Now I'm supposed to wait another two weeks before drinking them. But, I'll probably try one in about 10 days as I'd like to have our soon-to-arrive guests, Matt and Erika, try it. I'll be sure to follow up on the flavor.

Capping the bottles

Mildren Brewing up and running!

This past Christmas, Beth's parents got me a brewer starter kit from Bachus & Barleycorn in Kansas City. I've had some interest in doing homebrewing for a few years now, but living in craft beer-starved Guatemala for the past year-and-a-half was the impetus I needed to begin making my own beer. I brought back two ingredient packs, one of which was a gift from my good friend, Adam (who is also beginning to homebrew), and each one will yield around 5 gallons of beer (45 or more 12 oz. bottles of beer).

On Saturday, I started to make an English porter, which is a black beer with strong malt flavors and low hop bitterness--an easy-drinking ale. I'm calling it "Pacaya Porter," in honor of the active and black cooled-magma volcano, Pacaya. Using instructions provided by the homebrew shop as well as information from my copy of The Complete Joy of Homebrewing, I started to brew!

First I steeped a bag of pre-cracked grains in the water as I slowly brought it up to a temp of 170F.

Then I brought it to a boil, added the two cans of malt extract and hops and boiled it all for 45 minutes, checking often so as not to have a messy, sticky boil-over.


In the final 15 minutes I added more hops and a little Irish moss for additional flavoring and aroma. After an hour of boiling, I allowed the pot to cool for 30 minutes before then submerging it in a sink of ice to bring the temp down rapidly. Everything went surprisingly smooth, but then here's where things got messy...

I was supposed to transfer the "wort" (cooked ingredients) to my fermenter (in this case, a 5-gallon water jug). The trouble was that I needed to strain it as it went in. But since it was passing through a narrow neck, it was hard to accurately pour into the opening, as well, the strainer kept filling up and the wort spilled off the sides. In the end, I spilled a lot of valuable wort and made a BIG mess. Beth and I were pretty flustered, but we eventually got it all transfered over. We then had to calculate how much wort was lost and recalculate how much water to add to it. In the end, I went from making a 5-gallon batch to 3! Oh well. It's part of the learning process and everyone says something will go wrong during your first few batches.

After the water was added, I added the liquid yeast (which eats the malt sugars and converts them to alcohol), and attached the airlock (which allows the carbon dioxide to expel while keeping out all air-born bacteria and wild yeasts that could ruin the beer).


After sitting in the dark in our closet over night, I checked the fermenter and could see "kraeusen" forming on the top. This is a result of active yeast and a good sign!


The beer needs to sit for another two weeks to ferment. My next step will be to siphon out the liquid into another container and then add a sugary concoction to it. I do this right before I bottle the beer so that the yeast has more sugar to munch on while in the bottle so that it will create a natural carbonation. After sitting in the bottles for another week or two, the beer should be ready (assuming everything went accordingly!). I'll definitely post a follow-up to let you all know how it went.

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After a long afternoon of brewing, Beth and I were treated to a gorgeous sunset and BBQ dinner at our friend Kris' place.