Bottling

Once fermentation is finished we need to bottle the beer (note we can now consider this beer as it is an alcoholic beverage!) and put it in storage for a few weeks to mature nicely. This process is called racking. We can syphon off the beer into individual bottles (make sure your syphoning equipment and the bottles are sterilised thoroughly!), add a small amount of priming sugar, then seal them up with caps. Priming sugar is added not for the purposes of increasing the alcohol content, but to accelerate the conditioning of the beer. Fermentation acutally continues very slowly in the bottle, so by adding some fermentable sugars we can create a little bit of conditioning pressure and bring the beer into condition quicker.
A properly brewed and matured beer ought not need priming, but if we expect to drink this stuff any time soon then we can simply accelerate the conditioning process by adding a quarter-teaspoon of sugar to each bottle before capping. Plus there's nothing better than hearing that rush of escaping gas when you pop a cap off one of your beers :-)

Maturing

This is the worst bit - and anyone who finds a way to circumvent this part will become a millionaire overnight - but we have to let the beer mature, and this takes time. Typically, you would leave the beer for at least four weeks, but there has been many a time when we here at Beer Made Easy have lost patience and opened a taster bottle of a new exciting brew on only the third or even second week. DON'T DO IT! It's not worth it! Let it mature, it makes one hell of a difference if you do.
Generally speaking, lighter beers take less time to mature than stronger ones. An 8.0% killer will take months to properly mature, whereas a light 3.5% ale might only take three weeks.
If it's your first brew definitely leave it as long as you can otherwise you'll shatter your expectations when you pop open a two-week old bottle and taste something considerably less impressive than what you'd hoped for.

Want to know even more?

We hope we've whetted your interest and are curious enough to consider giving this wonderful past-time a little try! Remember to visit the guides in the How-To section and read Guide 1 to making your first home-brew using nothing but ordinary kitchen equipment!

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