Just a few hours after mixing the yeast into the wort, the primary fermentation vessel (a ka 5-gallon water bottle) comes alive! I made a video of the action:
After a few days, the activity is notably diminished, and the spent yeasty bodies litter the bottom of the vessel in moonscape dunes of flocculate.
Time to get ready to bottle. I recall emptying each and every one of these. Back in my youth, all bottles were reused; milk, soda, beer. I don’t exactly recall the day we all decided it was more logical to throw them all “away,” but apparently we did. It’s nice to recycle, but even better to re-use.
The big one is called a Growler, and was 64 delicious ounces of Dead Guy Ale from Rogue Brewery in Oregon. You can buy these at Tenor’s on North Market Street (highly recommended). I’ll re-use that one too.
As I transfer the ale to the bottling vessel, I’m adding a bit more dextrose (sugar) to ‘prime’ the bottles. Later, I read you were supposed to mix it with water first. That’s what you get when you read the directions after instead of before! Hopefully, I won’t get any bottle bombs. Anyway, too late now.
We pause now to note with sadness the recent passing of North Star Brewery.
Just the latest in local microbreweries I’ve seen shuttered. Why can’t our area support even one microbrewery? I mean, how hard can it be to sell beer? My friend Gary who works at Foothill Distributing (Bud and others) once told me that beverage start-ups are often undercapitalized. That’s not hard to imagine. Unlike say, a bakery, a brewery would experience a substantial interval between production costs and sales revenue.
I enjoyed North Star’s brews very much, and hope the brewmeisters keep trying until they find success. Meanwhile, back at my home bottling, the yeasty/hoppy/grainy aromatherapy works its mystical magic.
You’re supposed to measure this, but I can’t remember why. No matter what, it’s going in those bottles now. “Smells like a brewery in here.” says Karry. Well, yeah. Nice, huh?
Filling the one on the left, and emptying the one on the right. Yum.
I’m told the leftover yeasty bodies from the bottom of the fermenter are filled with B vitamins. This is going into our garden composter, so ultimately serving duty again in the vegetable garden.
I finished the Sierra Nevada Estate in time to wash and refill it. This batch will have to sit around for a month or so in a cool, dark location, until ready to share. Nothing to do now but clean up the equipment and wait. And the waiting is the hardest part.
I hope you enjoyed this series. Thanks to anewscafe.com for all you do, and to all you readers!
Click here to read Parts 1 and 2.
Skip Murphy and his daughter, Erin, are Redding area Realtors with Coldwell Banker. Skip’s blog is at ReallyRedding.com
