Columbia, MD September 13, 2018

A couple weeks ago, Sapwood Cellars gave away batches of wort. Wort, BTW, is unfermented beer. After picking up my 5-gallons of wort, I pitched a couple of packets of US-05 yeast and let it ferment. So…after about 10 days of waiting, today is bottling day!  

Sapwood Cellars is a brewery about to open very near my home. I drove over to Sapwood where Michael Tonsmeire filled up my glass carboy with wort made from some leftover grain milled by the previous tenant, Bulkhead. Michael and co-owner Scott Janish decided to test out their new system and give-away the product –  some lightly hopped wort.

While there, Spencer, the taproom manager, gave us a tour of the Sapwood Cellars. The taproom looks great!

I took the wort home, found a warm place in my house, and pitched the yeast. I used a mildly flavored yeast so as not to compete with the ginger flavor. After a week, I racked the ale to a secondary and put in some grated ginger, some cooked and some raw.

The original gravity was about 1.051 and now it is about 1.010 and steady. It is bottling day.

First I sterilize my bottles.

Then I add some priming sugar (4.8 ounces of DME) boiled for 10 minutes. To bottle, I use the empty dishwasher trick. Filling bottles in the bottom rack of the dishwasher helps keep the beer spills off the floor.

Capping the bottles is always so satisfying.

In the past, I used caps to identify my beers. This is a great system until the bottle is opened. At a homebrewing tasting, all my beers quickly became a mystery. Now, I use homemade labels, gluing them on with whole milk; apparently the fat works as the glue.

The 2 cases are in a fairly warm place, hopefully allowing the yeast to gently producing CO². I’ll try one in a week or so.

Cheers!

Warren