Guide to Bottling Beer: The Last Step of a Long Process

The final step of the beer brewing process is one of the most important steps. Without it, your beer would lack its carbonation and strongly suffer in the drink ability department. This step is what brewers refer to as the bottling phase. The bottling phase is when you transfer your beer from a primary fermenter or carboy into bottles, kegs, or other containers.

If you want to transfer your beer into bottles using a siphon, then you're already done with the first step, if not then read this paragraph. If you are not siphoning your beer directly into bottles then you must siphon it into a bottling bucket first. A bottling bucket is generally a bucket (without a lid) that has a spigot near the bottom of it.

The next step is to mix some sort of a beer priming solution into the beer. This makes it so that the yeast will be able to continue to ferment in the bottle and create the carbonation that makes beer so delicious.

From here you can take a few different directions in your beer brewing process. The first of which is to simply transfer the beer into bottles. Using this step you simply turn on the ball valve spigot in the bottling bucket with a beer bottle under it. After which you cap your beer using a special machine. Beer capping machine's come in both one handed mountable solutions as well as two handed solutions. At this phase in the beer brewing process it would be very helpful to have a friend or family member hand you bottles as you fill them.

Another option is to bottle the beer into pop top bottles. These bottles do not require caps, and are therefore very easy to reuse. If neither of these traditional options appeals to you then you can feel free to use sanitized pop bottles of even milk containers. A true beer critic would scoff at the use of plastic as a beer container, but some people don't notice the difference.

The final option is to move your beer into a keg. Storing beer in kegs is a practical solution, but is beyond the scope of this text due to its complexity. In order to store beer in a keg you will need to possess and know how to use pressure regulating equipment in order to artificially induce carbonation into the beer.

After you have bottle your beer, all you have to do is allow it to sit for 2 to 3 weeks and see how it turns out. If everything that came in contact with the beer was sanitized along the way, then you'll probably end up with drinkable, delicious beer.