1st batch in bottles: a learning expecrience

Last night SWMBO and I bottled our first batch, an extract Bavarian Wheat kit. Just a couple observations in no particular order:

My FG was around 1.014, right in the middle of what the recipe said I should expect.

I had about 4 1/2 - 4 3/4 gallons of wort, so I used just a hair under 3/4 of a cup dextrose in my priming solution.

Bottling was much easier with some help. I would have been up pretty late last night if I had to do it solo.

It definitely tasted like a flat, warm beer. I tasted more malt than hops. Hopefully the taste will improve in the coming weeks/months. We had some unexpected summer weather over the last couple weeks, and then it suddenly became fall so I hope that didn't adversely affect the batch.

Overall, the process was a lot of fun. I found a bunch of small things I could have done just from reading this forum. At the time, I forgot to take an initial hydromter reading. I also didn't have a thermoter, so there was some guess work in the first couple days. For those noobs in doubt, go get a thermoter and hydrometer. It will set your mind at ease.

I think the second batch will go much smoother and I will worry quite a bit less.


I'll be sure to write about how good or bad it finally came out.

Excellent! I bet the bottling part will turn out to be easier than the waiting-three-weeks part that comes after it.

I'm going to be doing my first bottling session in a couple of weeks. Was there anything you know now that you wished you'd known before you bottled?

The bottling part was pretty easy. I just cleaned the bottles with some oxy clean and dried/sanitized by putting them in the dishwasher with the dryer on. SWMBO bottled while I capped. We had an assembly line going and that made it super easy. Just remember to do the little things, like sanitizing your bottle caps. ANYTHING that your beer touches should be cleaned and sanitized. The only other trick I learned was to position my siphon hose so that it swirled around the bottling bucket, forcing the primer to get mixed thoroughly.

you'd be surprised at what the carbonation and proper serving temp will do for the flavor of the beer...especially after 3 weeks of conditioning in the bottle.

if anything, partial boils (a few gallons instead of a full 5.5 gallons of water) does lower hop utilization, meaning you may not have extracted enough bitterness for the style.

it happens. you can use more hops, or do a search here for 'late extract addition' to combat poor hop utilization, as well as getting a lighter color int he finished beer (malt extract tends to darken when boiled 60 minutes)

Kriso, where in Philly are you located? I live in N.E.Philly near the N.E.Airport. I am also a noobie, maybe we can meet and swap notes.