I think that capping bottles is one of the funnest parts of brewing. The other parts are all fine, don't get me wrong, but this step seems most like a game. Its most interactive. The rest is mostly just like cooking and waiting.
Matt and I make a good bottling team, too. He fills 'em up and I cap them. I quite like the little press the squeezes the lids around the mouth of the bottle. It makes it all quite easy.
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| In one of the beer brewing books all the photos--of all the steps--show the people enjoying a homebrew whilst they brew. Matt, of course, thought we should replicate this. So, here he is filling and swilling. |
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| It might be a good photo op, but its really impossible to cap a bottle with one hand, I think. |
If we play our cards right we hope to have three different kinds of beer to enjoy with Adam when we see him in a couple weeks--Amber, Nut Brown, and Dunkelweizen. As of yet, we've been making one kind, drinking it all, and making another, and drinking it all. But you know the saying, variety is the spice of life.
It must be very satisfying seeing all those beers you have made yourselves filling up your shelves. I had a little laugh on the "filling and swilling" method :) Sounds like a pretty good way to finish off the process.
ReplyDeleteIt is very satisfying indeed! On both ends of things...there is lots of beer on the shelf but not lots of empty bottles in the recycle bin. That makes me very happy. We drank the last of our pilsner, our very first batch, for Valentine's Day last night. It had gotten even better with a little age.
DeleteI could never drink and work at anything because I am sure I would mess up the work part. I went to an antique store last Saturday and saw an old bottle capper. It was one-armed and all metal. I wanted to buy it, but do not make beer. Do you think it worked? Can I cap anything but beer?
ReplyDeleteIt might indeed still work as part of that they-don't-make-them-like-they-used-to thing that is very true in my opinion. We also bottled some of our cider in an attempt to make it carbonated. So I am sure you could cap other things like juice and such.
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