First Extract Brew

TheJadedDog and BierMuncher thanks so much for your help and advice throughout this process, you have offered a lot of insight!

Well, we bottled last night... it took awhile to sanitize all the bottles, all the tools, and really get underway. However, once we began bottling it was a smooth operation. My brother bottled with the auto dealie (when you lift it stops filling) and I did the capping and all the other preparation. Also, my FG reading was 1.011. Which according to the calculation someone gave me 1.045 - 1.011 = .034 * 131 = 4.454 (Apprx 4.5% ABV). Which is IMO quite a bit lower than what we were shooting for for an IPA (Around 5.6). Oh well... I took a sip once we were finished with all the bottles and I must say other than not having carbonation the taste was really delicious.... just a tad more mellow I believe due to the lower ABV, but nonetheless really a delicious beer.

Now, as long as my bottles don't explode and everything is all good... in a couple weeks I'll have some delicious beer!

Great job...now:

Don't drink them.
Don't expect them to be carb'd in 2 weeks.
Keep them at 70+ degrees
Go buy some micro brew and quench your thirst with those.
Get busy with your next recipe.

Enjoy...

Okay here are some pictures of the bottling process at my brother's house. My brother just recently bought this house and is completely renovating it... so that will explain the missing cupboards, no tiling, etc (if you even notice).

Now, onto the pictures!



Sanitizing

Sanitizing

Starting the siphon

Getting pissed about getting my picture taken so many times!

Being nice

Brother, Myself

Going into the bottling bucket

Yeast

Tonight I'll be sampling my beer. It's been in the bottle for one week and one day. I know it's not "ready" until 3 or 4 weeks, but I atleast have to try one!

I'll post a picture of how it's looking and if I come back disappointed, be sure to remind me that I still need to give it a couple weeks and it'll be great!

Hah.

Go for it. Don't be at all disappointed if it shows absolutely no signs of carbing up yet. Seems like mine alwasy go 2 weeks with nothing and then there is this 2-day window where all of a sudden....fizz.

The whole brewing process was a lot of fun... and I was pretty sure even before my taste tonight that I wanted to do it again, but it gets you way more hooked if your first batch is delicious... and I must say... it is delicious.

I went into having pretty low expectations... because I felt like I didn't do everything "perfect". Well.... I was blown away tonight. My beer was actually partially carbonated, and the taste was absolute amazing (I'm not tooting my own horn... it was really good). We are talking after only one week and one day in the bottle... according to advice from you far more advanced brewers it's not deemed "ready" until after several weeks... and I've also heard it's usually considered "pretty awesome" after a couple months in the bottle..... so I can only imagine how much better it will be then! And it's already pretty darn tasty! It had a very nice head, and it was your typical IPA color (it may look a little darker because I have smoked glasses). There was very very little sediment as well, as we did a great job filtering into the primary to start with and then siphoning to the bottling bucket helped even more.... I don't think the use of the secondary (which we didn't use) would be necessary for how well we filtered it into the primary intially.... but utilizing this may make this awesome beer even better!

Anyway, I'm going to try and wait another week (but I probably won't make it that long) before I crack open another. I'm very pleased with my first batch and I'm just delighted that it turned out not just drinkable, but actually quite delicious!

Cheers to my first batch of tasty IPA!

Congrats, we told you it'd be okay!