Almigo brews a beer part 6: Sticky messy satisfaction

Okay, you've had enough fermenting time there brew of mine, time to put you in bottles and like a fine wine let you age. For a couple of weeks at least.

It's been a pretty busy week for me here on the Gold Coast - plenty of Comm Games action to gawnk at, plenty of Comm Games traffic and bus designated Games Lanes to avoid. Oh and it's week two of school holidays at the moment so there's been a couple of trips to various activities along the way.
Fearing that I'd miss the proper days to carry out the next steps in the beer making process, I actually put them in as reminders on my phone.
(This turned out to be a life saver as I clean forgot which day was dry hop day until the phone reminded me. If you're anything like me and forget everything, do this and save yourself a tonne of hassle. )
For the last three days my first brew has been getting it's dry hop on. In that bag is 10 grams of Citra hops (actually possibly more with the stupid scales I want to hurl through the window still being problematic) for that extra hoppy infusion.

Cleaning the bag might be a challenge

I can tell you that before they went in, it smell slightly hoppy. Now after three days it's a 21 hop gun salute ready to fire. And even better there's no off smells coming out either - no funky banana, baby chuck or bottled fart.
The color is like autumn, it's smelling like an IPA should.
Things are going stupidly well for my first ever brew.

It can't all go well though can it?

No of course not. And I realized a minor mistake I made back on brew day when I used the hydrometer on brewing day. It sunk right to the bottom and I figured this was normal - hardly any alcohol has worked it's way out so far with the wort hence why it hit the bottom.

However taking a sample today to work out the ABV, the hydrometer dropped to the bottom once again.

Surely my brew hasn't somehow dumped all it's boozy goodness for some reason has it? After a quick googling, I found my answer. I was using 200mls to sample but it wasn't enough to completely submerge the hydrometer which meant that it couldn't float off the bottom to save itself. So I have a final gravity...but no original gravity. No real big deal to be honest when I'm the only one drinking it in my own house but at least I'll know how to record the ABV for next time around. 

Time to get sticky

I won't lie. Bottling this brew was ridiculously messy. I had a pretty simple process involving my very helpful son too. Dad would fill the beer bottles with glorious brew via a gravity hand pump, Jackson would pop a carbonation drop and a bottle cap on it, Dad would use Capperdonna to seal it up. 

However: Beer. Went. Everywhere. In the bottle, on the bottles, all over the bottles, all over the table, all over me (Jackson missed out thankfully). Constantly gushing out of the hand pump and I couldn't get fresh bottles under the flow in time. 

Still after all the mess (thankfully we did this outside so only part of the backyard ended up sticky) and what was left in the carboy from brew day, we made 10 bottles.

That's 10 bottles of my very first beer. A few mistakes along the way but almost a couple of 6 packs to start. It's an amazing feeling.

Now to let them sit for at least a couple of weeks and resist the temptation to tuck into them early..