Homebrew demo 2 - Bottling - Midleton Dec 4th

[johnrm]

An Evening of Brewing
The National Homebrew Club
with
Mad Monk, Midleton
Bottling demo – bottle the net from the Nov meet!
Equipment and Process
Free beer samples
**Beer Starter Kit Raffle!** Courtesy of Homebrew West
Discuss: bottles - sourcing, cleaning, sanitation, filling capping and labeling.
Wed  4th Dec 7:30pm-9pm
Mad Monk, Church Lane, Midleton
For more details...
www.nationalhomebrewclub.com
Email johnrm@nationalhomebrewclub.com
Phone John 086-8091777

[delzep]

You're gonna bottle a whole batch in the pub? 

[johnrm]

I might drop some into a keg and serve it on hand pump on the night too...

[johnrm]

This is happening tonight.
First up is revision of the first night.
Talking through the ins and outs of bottling.
The attendees are then going to bottle and label their own beer.
Choice of bench or twin handle capper.
Followed by samples on draught of a simple English Ale - Single hop - Fuggles.
Raffle of starter kit courtesy of HBW, and Coopers Wheat beer courtesy of myself!
Then chill for the evening.

[johnrm]

Another great evening!
20+ bodies present, and many familiar faces from the first night.
Down numbers wise from the first night, but a healthy interest group in Midleton.

A typical Irish start, I announced 7:30, but we got started at 8pm.
I explained pretty much what we did the last night by way of revision, then talked about the bottle harvesting process.
I brought pre sanitised bottles, that had been through a dishwasher in the previous days and had a dip in sanitiser earlier in the day.

I had racked to secondary about 2 weeks ago, so Batch primed (explained Carbonatin drops) and used the autosyphon to move from fermenter to bottling bucket.
Paranoid as always, I put a blanket of CO2 in the bottling bucket.

I had a twin-handled and Bench capper on hand, so demonstrated these and showed simple labelling using milk as adhesive.
I then left it to the attendees to finish the batch.

The easiest bottling session I have ever done! 

We raffled off the kit kindly donated by HomebrewWest (Congrats Cyril!), dished out the HomebrewWest Keyrings and flyers, and divvied up the bottles that we just filled.

Samples on the night...
Fu**** me! - English pale ale, Single-hopped with Fuggles.
D'Uncle - Dunkelweiss

Thanks to all for attending.
Special thanks to Lordeoin and Garry for helping out, particularly the lugging at the end!
And not forgetting...
Homebrewest for the raffle
The Mad Monk for putting up with me taking over the place!

[LordEoin]

Cheers John, it was a good night. Even the North Cork Brewer's Alliance couldn't have done much better 
I'd say there'll be some flat bottles on Dec25th, I noticed afterwards that half of them weren't capped tight at all 
Ah well, I'm sure they'll all be enjoyed!
Good tip with using milk as label glue by the way, I must try it out.
And thanks for bringing the silicone tubing, I wasn't expecting that.

[johnrm]

Hi sexy Santa.
What type bottles weren't capped right and what capper was used?

[LordEoin]

I've no idea which capper was used. I just noticed it when cleaning up. Some of the caps could be pushed off by hand, I gave them another blast in the bench capper to seal them, but I'd say a fair few went travelling half capped.

[derfel]

That was another good session - I picked up a few nice tips too with the bottling process. I could
really have used a how-to like that before I started myself, it would have saved a lot of experimentation. (and mess)

blurry camera phone pic attached.