Beer School #2

**First off let me just say that this blog is about a week late. Holiday Magic is in secondary, one week away from bottling and Autumn Amber is bottled and two weeks away from drinking. 

Secondary fermentation is boring. It's finally in a clear container so you can see what it is doing and it is not doing anything! Not even bubbling much. Really you just put it that container to clean out all the yeast that died during primary (and settled to the bottom) and letting it age. After letting the beer sit in a clear plastic carboy in the basement during secondary fermentation for a week, it's time to bottle it. Finally - I get to help more, though Aaron still did most of the work. We transfer it to a bottling bucket because it has a spout, but I guess we could bottle it from the clear carboy. There's probably a reason not to - but I can't think of it.

First Aaron had to get all the labels off the bottles which he did in the claw foot bathtub with a lot of Oxyclean and hot water. Apparently Dos Equis labels are the hardest to remove (according to the boards on the websites), but that is the beer of choice on sale that my Dad has been drinking to supply us with bottles. We are not really able to supply our own bottles because I do not drink enough and Aaron doesn't drink a beer that comes with a pop off cap. :/ Are we even going to be able to drink all the beer we are brewing? Nope. We are going to give it away at cheap prices - and drink as much as we can.

Next the bottles had to go in the dishwasher to be sanitized. Aaron proclaimed we had the best dishwasher for this (becuase of the settings), until we realized that no bottles would go on the top rack. We rearranged and rearranged until we were able to get at least 50 bottles on the bottom rack - and it was a tight squeeze (see photo).

Aaron transferred the beer from the plastic carboy to the bottling bucket (because it has a spout) and we got to work. That's right - we. Bottling is truly a two person job. Even though Aaron tries to do as much as possible without assistance (see photo).

Aaron filled the bottles and I capped them. We got into a rhythm and it went quickly. I only destroyed one cap and no bottles were broken and no beer was spilled. We got a little less than 45 bottles out of this brew. We should get more the next time because this time we had a small boil over and in the first transfer we didn't get as much because of poor suction.