It's Monday...Back to the Salt Mines

Beer production was the name of the game this weekend.

Saturday afternoon I bottled a batch that I made two weeks ago. It was a recipe similar to Heineken in taste.

I washed a zillion bottles (52) and sanitized them. Everything has to be sterile since this beer is not pasteurized. I swear I think I could do surgery in this little guest kitchen.

I get obsessed with germs so I sanitize the counter, my hands, pots, pans, spoons and anything that comes in contact with the beer. It takes 20 minutes contact with bleach and three rinsing to declare it sanitized and fit for beer contact.

Hell I don’t cook my food in an environment this clean.

I don’t even expose the beer to air when I transfer it. The beer only moves through sanitized siphon tubes.

The capper gave me a problem. Once I fill six sanitized bottles, I take six sanitized caps and cap each bottle. For some reason I wasn’t getting a good crimp on the bottles and could twist the cap afterwards. This was not a good enough seal for Mr. No Germs. Plus I needed a perfect seal for the beer to carbonate.

So I go back and re-crimp 52 bottles four times each. Then I discovered that I was not doing something correctly and was actually using a wine bottle setting. Then I went back and crimped 52 bottles again correctly this time.

My pectoral muscles are killing me.

Then Sunday morning I got up early and sanitized everything and brewed up another batch of beer. This is some German knock off.

So I have one batch fermenting, one batched bottled and conditioning, and once case left out of two of the first batch I made in June.

It is my intent to save that first case for a while to come tastes with these other batches in a month or so.

I certainly wouldn’t go to all this trouble if this stuff was so darn good and superior to any beer that I have tasted. It is amazing that I can make this beer from my kitchen.