Lauren Kalns's PLPA 631 Lab Notes: November 21 Lab

The goals for this lab were to:

Bottle the fermented beer
Finish up our unknowns

Bottling beer

The beer that we began brewing in October was now ready to be bottled. A lot of the time people have to gather a large quantity of glass bottles to put the beer into, but Dr. Shaw recently purchased a keg, so we were spared the time and hassle of capping numerous bottles. We did individually bottle 12 bottles; as a comparison to the kegged beer, but also to try Carb Tabs, individual tablets of priming sugar that can be added directly to the bottle. This spared us from having to measure out the bagged priming sugar, as we were not adding it to the bulk of the beer due to the fact that the keg beer will receive its carbonation through a CO2 tank. We began the day by sterilizing with Star San everything that would come in contact with the beer: bottles, keg, caps, lines, etc.

A bucket of Star San ready to sterilize our stuff.

The Carb Tabs were placed in each bottle, 4 each for average carbonation according to the directions. Then we filled the glass bottles by placing one end of flexible tubing into the beer, siphoning beer through the line, placing the tubing tip on that aids in filling the bottles, and then placing the tip to the bottom of the bottle and filling until full. Then the hand-held capper could be used to secure the cap on the bottle.

Charity modeling how to use the capper.

The next step was to fill the keg. We poured some Star San solution into the keg, then used the CO2 tank to run the solution through the lines. Once a bit of solution had run through the lines, we emptied the keg of sanitizer, then siphoned out beer from the carboy into the keg.

Siphoning beer into the keg or bottles.

Sedimentation of proteins at the bottom of our brew.

We made sure the leave any sedimentation at the bottom of the carboy and not include this in our keg beer.

Once full, the keg was sealed and then attached to the CO2 tank and pressurized to 20 PSI. It will need to remain pressurized for a while to get the right consistency.