Packaging and Carbonation

Congratulations; your beer is finished! It's also flat and probably in a pretty inconvenient container. To create a finished product, you need to carbonate it and package it in a way that makes it easy to get at and drink. How you package your beer will help determine how you carbonate it as well.

Carbonating and Packaging for the Beginning Homebrewer

Beginning brewers generally prime their beer with sugar and bottle it; this is the simplest method of carbonation and packaging and requires the least amount of extra equipment. The simplest way to prime your beer is to add a measured amount of sugar (which may have come with your ingredient kit) to your beer in the bottling bucket, stir well, and bottle. You should read the section on bottling below to ensure that you properly bottle and cap your beer, and if necessary the section on priming to determine how much priming sugar you need to add.

Packaging

Carbonation

Carbonation is created by dissolved carbon dioxide in the beer. This can be achieved in two ways: by adding extra sugar and yeast to the bottle, keg, or cask, which will create carbon dioxide naturally, or by forcing pressurized carbon dioxide into a container (usually a keg) and allowing it to dissolve into the beer.

Bottle conditioning

Cask conditioning

Cask conditioning is a process similar to bottle conditioning, but instead of a bottle the priming sugar and yeast are added to a cask. While the process is the same, the larger volume lends a different character to finished bottle- and cask-conditioned beer.

Keg conditioning

The term keg conditioning is sometimes used for cask conditioning beer in a standard homebrewer's Cornelius keg. However, since a cask can be made of metal, there is no functional difference between cask and keg conditioning, except that a few additional steps must be taken to adapt the keg to keg conditioning:

• Shorten the dip tube. Cornelius kegs generally have a dip tube that reaches to the very bottom of the keg. Removing a small amount of this dip tube will prevent yeast sediment generated during conditioning from being drawn up first when the keg is tapped.
• Start conditioning at low pressure. Some home brewers prefer to leave a small amount of pressure on the beer while the conditioning process is beginning to ensure a seal until enough pressure builds up from the fermentation.

The beer can then be served from a hand pump or under low carbon dioxide pressure.

Force carbonation

What do I do next?

Congratulations - your beer is finished! All you have to do is wait for carbonation to be complete, and you're on to the ultimate goal of the beer brewing process: Dispensing and Serving.