How to Make Beer

Step 8

Gently pour your cooled wort through your sanitized strainer and funnel into the empty fermentation bottle. You'll want the total volume in the fermenter to be 2 1/2 gallons. If your brew pot was big enough to allow you to boil a full 2 1/2 gallons you'll have to compensate for evaporation that took place during the boil. If you need to add water to reach the 2 1/2 gallon mark made in Step 4 do it now. Tap water is fine. You can use water from the 1/2 gallon you poured off in Step 4 if you saved it to a sanitized container. Bring the total volume up to the mark we made earlier on the bottle.

Comments

[MekkMan]

Tap water?? Yech! 1. not really bug free in a lot of places. 2. Nasty chlorine affects taste 3. Chlorine can interfere with yeast growth. Instead use the bottled water (also not very attractive because of nasty plasticizers), boiled water that's cool (boiling drives off the chlorine), or tap water that's been put through a good filter. I prefer boiled and filtered.

[kclouse]

I agree, boil the water and let it cool, but no filtering is needed. In the US most tap water is "bug" free, putting it through a Brita filter or something of the sort will tend to increase the microbe levels. This will however remove a lot of the minerals unwanted in some types of brewing.

[Matt D655]

Why do ya use a Water cooler? Visit leeners.com and get proper brewing supplies.

[harigast]

i think the point of this instructable is to make beer without the proper supplies. although if anyone has ever gotten a kit this i really all it is anyway. they just make it look prettier.

[skullspawn]

It may be wise to leave a little room in the bottle for the foam that might come through the airlock during fermentation.