in which my son and i bottle our beer

ByWil

I walked down the hallway toward the guest room, and started talking before I got to the door.

"Hey, I just looked at my calendar, and I miscalculated when we should bottle our beer."

I stepped off the wood floor of the hallway and onto the soft carpet we just had installed. I involuntarily squished it between my toes.

Ryan was sitting at the desk, headphones on, playing WoW.

"Hey!" I said, loudly.

He kocked one can off his right ear with the back of his hand. "What?"

"I miscalculated when we are supposed to bottle our beer."

He clicked the mouse around the screen. Numbers floated around the screen, words scrolled through the chat window in a blur, and for the millionth time I tried and failed to see the appeal of the game.

"Oh? When do we do it?" Click click click.

"Today. It's been three weeks, and our specific gravity hasn't changed in three days."

"Dude!" He spun around in his chair. "That's awesome!"

"I know, right?!" I noticed that some words had joined the numbers, and a bunch of little things were running around his player thing. "Aren't you going to, um, die?"

"No, I'm really high level. I can handle it." He said.

"Oh … well … there's a lot going on there and … numbers … are …"

Now I know how my dad felt when I tried to explain how awesome it was that we killed a Lich in D&D when I was 12.

"The important thing is, today we're bottling our beer." I said, "so we need to sanitize our bottles and everything."

He grinned. "Okay. Give me a minute."

"A minute minute, or an I'm-playing-a-game minute?"

"Sixty seconds." He clicked the mouse again and pushed some keys on the keyboard. A flurry of numbers danced around and some graphics that looked like blasts of Eldritch power shot out of his guy into something that sort of looked like a monster.

When I roll dice and do this in my head, it's awesome … but I just do not get this at all. I thought with a mental sigh.

I walked on down the hall, came to a door, and looked inside.

"Sorry, you'll have to put your boots on if you want to come in here," a guard in a tie-dyed shirt and nothing else said.

(I may have made that last bit up for my own amusement.)

Forty-three seconds later, Ryan joined me in my office.

"You killed that guy?"

"Yeah."

I searched my memory for dialog from The Guild.

"Did you make some … epic … loot … um … drop?" I asked.

"Nothing epic, but the other guys got some decent stuff." He said.

"Did you get … a … loot?" I picked up a six pack of bottles in each hand.

"No," he said, patiently, "there wasn't anything there I could use." He picked up a case of bottles, and we walked to the kitchen together.

"Well … um … awesome!" I said, secretly proud of my ability to fake it through the conversation, and grateful that Ryan didn't call me out.

As we began washing our bottles, I realized that we only had 30, about 20 bottles less than we'd need for the whole batch.

"I thought we drank more beer," I said.

"We did, but that was at comicon," he said.

"Oh, that's right." I plunged some bottles into the sink and let them fill with water.  They sank to the bottom and I picked up some more to join them.

"I'm actually looking forward to going back to college, because it'll give me a chance to detox my liver after spending the summer with you."

We laughed. "Hey, these beer bottles aren't going to empty themselves," I said.

"And we can't just pour them out, because that would be alcohol abuse," he added.

"See? This is what I'm talking about. Clearly, I've raised you right."

Once the sink was filled with bottles and my hands were dry, I counted one more time, just to be sure: we were about a case of bottles short.

"I'm going to run over to the homebrew shop and pick up a case of bottles. Do you want to come with me?"

"No, I'll stay here and finish washing these. I want to get the labels off the Sierra Nevadas."

"Okay. Be right back."

I drove to the homebrew shop in Eagle Rock. The man who we first talked to three weeks ago was working. I asked him for a case of 12 ounce bottles, and when he rang me up, I said, "I don't know if you remember me, but my son and I came in here three weeks ago. You talked us through the whole brewing process, and helped us get our kit and first batch of beer together."

"Yes! You looked familiar, but I couldn't figure out why." He said.

"Well, today we are bottling that batch, and I wanted to thank you for being so kind and helpful. I was so intimidated by the idea of brewing, if you hadn't taken the time to explain it to us, I probably wouldn't have had the courage to start."

He punched some numbers into the register, and I continued. "My son and I have had an absolute blast brewing since then. We've made a one gallon all-grain IPA, we've made ginger ale, and we've made two kinds of bread and dog biscuits with the spent grain. We've had this wonderful father/son activity, and it's meant the world to me."

He smiled.

"So … um … thank you, for that," I said, realizing that I'd been rambling.

"You're welcome! It's my pleasure. Once you figure out that it's really just some basic steps, it's not that difficult."

"I know! We're going to make a couple more recipes, and then we'll build something of our own."

I handed him some money and he said, "that's the best part. You can experiment with different kinds of grain to get different styles, and you'll have all kinds of fun figuring out how to make a brown ale and then a porter and then a stout, or whatever you want to make."

"We're keeping a journal, and I've read the Papazian book and the John Palmer's book. I just got the recipe book in the mail this morning, and I'm taking it on location next week so …" I realized, again, that I was rambling. "I guess what I'm trying to say is 'thank you for introducing me to something awesome to do with my son that I also know is going to be a passion of mine for the rest of my life."

"You're welcome," he said, kindly. He handed me my change and my case of bottles, and I headed back home.

"I just finished," Ryan said when I walked into the kitchen, "and I need to break for lunch."

"No problem," I said. We ate some food while I rinsed the Oxy Clean off all of the bottles, then we filled our bottling bucket and added some StarSan. For the next half an hour or so, we sanitized the bottles by hand, and set them out to dry.

"99 bottles of beer on the wall, 99 bottles of beer," Ryan sang, softly, "you take one down, put it on the ground, and then you have to sanitize the bottles again."

I laughed. "Yeah, this is ponderous, man. It's fuckin' ponderous." Is Don on the phone? Get Don on the phone! And where are those pictures I was supposed to see today?! "I think we should invest in a kegging system."

We talked about quantum physics and this story we're writing together while we worked our way through the bottles. When we had about ten left I said, "You know, maybe this isn't so bad. I mean, it's something we're doing together, right? If we weren't doing this, you'd be playing WoW and I'd be reading Reddit. I'd much rather spend this time with you, washing bottles and talking about stuff, then doing anything else."

"Yeah," he said, "me too."

Finally, the bottles were all sanitized. We let them dry, then covered them with foil to keep out the bad stuff. We boiled our priming sugar, put it into our sanitized bucket, and then siphoned the beer out of our carboy and into the bucket.

"Holy shit," Ryan said, "that smells and looks like beer!"

I pinched the siphon and grabbed our hydrometer tube thing. I put some beer into it and handed it to him. "Go ahead and taste it," I said.

He took a sip, and I watched a thoughtful look pass across his face before being instantly replaced with joyful excitement. "OH MY GOD IT IS TOTALLY BEER!"

I shared his excitement as I put the siphon back into the bucket, and let it continue filling. We checked the temperature and took a gravity reading. "It looks like it's 1.024," I said. Ryan concurred. "I think that means we're going to end up around four percent or so, which I think is pretty okay for this style of beer."*

"I don't care what percent it is, as long as it tastes good," he said.

"Are you sure you're in college? I asked. I took the hydrometer out of the beer, and set it carefully on the counter. Then, I sipped the beer. "It is totally beer," I said. "I'm so proud of us!"

The bucket finished filling, and we moved it up onto the counter. We grabbed a cooking pot out of a drawer, and put some bottles in it. "Ryan, would you like to fill our first bottle?" I asked.

"Why yes, yes I would."

He put the siphon into an empty brown bottle. When it pressed against the bottom, a valve opened up, and beer began to fill it. When it was right at the neck, he took it out, and I rested a cap (sitting in our no-rinse sanitizing solution, of course) on top of it. Paternal pride swelled in my chest, and threatened to push something out of the corners of my eyes.

When he finished the rest of the bottles, we moved them to the counter, refilled the pot with empties, and then filled them. We repeated this process until we had bottled just about four and a half gallons.

"Okay, let's cap these little beauties!" I said.

I held the first bottle steady as Ryan put the capper onto the top, and pressed the handles down. He lifted it away, and we both just stared at it for a few seconds.

"Dude," Ryan said, "that's our first bottle of beer!"

Earlier that afternoon, I'd bought some 1/4 inch round stickers at the store. We'd loaded an OpenOffice document and made a sheet of 24 for each of us that said California Pale Ale in our own font and color, so we'd know which beer belonged to whom. I picked up Ryan's sheet of labels and stuck one of his stickers on the bottle.

"I want you to have the first one," I said. I don't know if it was as important and meaningful to him as it was to me, but when he thanked me and carefully set it to one side, I thought that maybe it was.

We capped all of our beers, putting labels on as we went. We numbered the first ten bottles because we're nerds and we like to do that sort of thing. Then, we were finished. We looked at the counter in my kitchen, covered with bottles that were filled with beer. Our beer. Beer we had made. Together.

"I love that we did this," I said.

"Me too," Ryan said. "Is it two weeks, yet?"

I smiled. "Nope. But it will be two weeks before we know it."

When that day arrives, it will be bittersweet for me. On one hand, we get to try our beer for the first time, but it also means that Ryan will be going back to school a day or so later. But I'm looking forward to getting on Skype with him in a month or so, and through the miracle of technology, having one of our beers, that we made, together … and as far as loot goes, that's pretty epic at any level.

* After writing this, I checked my notes and looked at all our charts and conversion tables. Surprise! I misread the hydrometer. We were actually at 1.018, which should come out of the bottle between 3 and 4 percent ABV. Or I was right, I'm going to have an exploding, beer-filled closet in a week. I'll just play the waiting game until next Friday, and then I should know.

Okay, waiting game sucks; it's time for Hungry Hungry Hippos.

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165 Comments

  1. I’m sure it’s going to be a FAQ, so let me get this out right away: we ended up choosing a name from the hundreds of brilliant names (for our brewery and for our beer) suggested on Twitter.
    I’m having a label made, though, so I’m holding off on revealing it until I can share the picture that goes with it.

  2. Can’t wait to read what you called it. Loved reading about your bottling day. And the father son excitement and time together. Sweet!

  4. 1.024? What was the starting gravity? Was it an extract brew? I’m hoping you made an error reading the fg, because o/w, it’s highly likely those bottles are dangerous.
    A standard pale ale should finish about 1.012. Any more than that than if there are still fermentables there’s a very real chance those bottles will explode.
    Sorry.

  6. Oh shit. Well, maybe we did it wrong. I'm not especially confident in my ability to take a correct reading and adjust it for temperature. It may be closer to 1.018.

  7. “OK. I want a goddamned concerted effort to come out of a blog post that isn’t a fucking happy blog post every time I do a goddamned Negativland reference!” — Casey Kasem.

  10. The gradations are quite fine. How much priming sugar did you add? If it was 3 weeks since brewing it’s actually a little unlikely that they’d all of a sudden take off in the bottle.
    This kind of thing only happens when it’s not very fermentable in which case it isn’t a problem in the bottle, or it was stored too cold – so it didn’t ferment to completion in which case you have a problem.
    It should be pretty much through the priming sugar in one week, how much did you add? Pop one at the end of one week, noting how much carbonation there is (recap it, no problems). Then pop one (a different one) every two days to keep on top of it. If there is a problem it will be getting obviously more and more carbonated. The best thing to do at that point is put them all in the fridge. That will stop fermentation.
    Then drink them 🙂

  11. Its moments like that which, as a parent, will live on in memory for eternity. Really enjoyed this post, it flowed so naturally that it captured the moment like a Polaroid. Thanks!

  12. I’m glad that home brewing has given you and Ryan so much quality time together. In college, bottling was a good male bonding activity for me and my buddies. I got tired of messing with the bottles and got into kegging, but sometimes I miss the fun we had bottling.
    Several of my beers back in college finished with a high gravity for some reason. I never took a gravity reading on my water (a 400 foot deep well) so I don’t know if that had anything to do with it. But, my beers all came out to 4.5% to 6% alchohol so I never complained. I never had a bottle blow up either.
    If you want to brew a stout to enjoy this winter, I suggest you brew it now and let it condition in the bottle for about three months. My stout recipe is always at its best after three months in the bottle or keg.

  13. I think we put in 3/4 cup of priming sugar? Our homebrew shop sells it pre-measured in a bag, so I don't remember the exact amount.
    We kept the fermentation between 65-75 degrees using a water bath with occasional additions of ice packs. I monitored the temp *very* closely on that, so I know it was in that range the whole time.
    We racked into the carboy on 7/19. Would that make a difference? I know we racked it a little too early.

  14. Thank you. I thought I was writing a post about making beer, and it turns out I was writing a post about how much I love my son.

  16. Thanks for the recommendation on the stout! I was going to do my next batch when I get back from location in a couple weeks, so I'll make it a stout, for sure.

  18. I’m very curious to know what kinds of expenses you’ve accrued in the brewing of this beer and how it compares, cost-wise, to simply buying good beer. I ask because this sort of thing could be fun (once I have a house), but financials are a bit tight and I’d like to have an idea what it could cost to jump in Wheaton-style.

  19. Wil, here is my stout recipe if you are interested. Most of my friends in college thought it was better than Guinness. Often, I’ll add a pound or so of oatmeal to the grains when I steep them.
    For a 5 gallon batch:
    1/4 lb chocolate malt, steap
    1/4 lb black barley, steap
    1/2 lb 90L crystalmalt, steap
    7 lb Briess dark extract
    1.5 oz Bullion hops, boil
    0.5 oz Willamette hops, finish
    Irish ale yeast
    I’ve got a few more recipes on my website:
    http://home.roadrunner.com/~limited58/homebrew.htm

  20. This post is exactly why you are one of my favorite celebrities, hands down. I actually had tears in my eyes (and was laughing my ass off at you holding a World of Warcraft conversation with your son).

  22. For the five gallons we brewed, including the costs associated with all the equipment, I think we spent about $230. I've also spent about $40 on books, and another $40 on the IPA kit from Brooklyn Brew Shop. The bottles I bought yesterday were $23 with tax.
    So, adding it all up, let's say just over $300 to get just about 60 bottles of beer.
    $300/60= about $5 per bottle, which is about the same as the Dogfish Head 90-minute IPA I buy from time to time, and that's the most expensive beer I buy. My Stone IPA and Ruination is closer to $2.50 or $3 a bottle.
    I suppose we could subtract the $40 I spent on books, and the $23 for bottles (assuming you save your bottles, which I understand all homebrewers do), and we're looking at something closer to $4 a bottle.
    But I don't think you brew beer yourself to save money, to be honest. I think you do it because you love to make beer.

  24. We tried kegging, but were never happy with the beer. Now we use 1 liter amber flipper bottles (also called EZ-cap bottles), which are easy to use and re-use. Also use this sanitizer injector to sanitize the bottles. http://morebeer.com/view_product/15682/102303/Sanitizer_Injector
    We don’t bother with the bottle tree it’s supposed to sit on top of. It’s definitely an easier and less messy bottling system. Though, if the husband ever gets the kegerator he’s always wanted, I guess we would go back to the kegs… 🙂

  25. This was a really touching read. Thank you so much for sharing that. My Dad passed away a few years ago and it made me think of the times that he and I got to share the discovery of new things. Great post!

  26. Cool! Let me know how it turns out. And now that you are getting the hang of it, don’t limit yourself to one batch at a time. I often had three fermentors going at once back in the day, sometimes more.

  27. This really reminds me of how much fun I’ve had with my Dad as he’s taught me how to ride a motorcycle the last few years. I love just washing our bikes together. Thanks for sharing this.
    BTW, I have a vinyl printer and plotter and can print/cut some custom labels if you ever want some.

  28. If it’s any consolation, I don’t get WoW, either, must be an age thing. My favourite computer games are still Point-and-Click adventures.
    I love reading about your brewing adventures, please keep them coming.
    And yes, I wish my dad had brewed beer with me…

  29. In spite of the fact that I don’t drink, I’m tremendously intrigued by the process of brewing and the complexities involved. In true form Wil, you’ve shared this in a way that was delightful to read. I hope to see the whole thing in a book some day (or at least hear it from an audio book as I am wont to do…)

  30. I’d suggest opening a bottle after 7 days. If it “gushes” you’re headed to bottle bomb territory. The good news is you can stop the process by putting them in the fridge to make the yeast go dormant. Good news part deux is that after 7 days you’ll still have a mostly carbonated brew if everything is going to plan 🙂

  33. Think of the equipment costs as a one time investment. The average 5 gallon beer kit will make about two cases (1 case = 24 bottles) of bottled beer and will cost anywhere from $25.00 to $45.00 on average, depending on the beer style and your location (things are more expensive in certain parts of the country). Two cases of Samuel Adams beer costs about $56.00 here in SE Texas but I can make a 5 gallon clone for $30.00. So, you can save money and have great beer by home brewing.

  34. This was just such a lovely post. While I don’t bottle beer with my father, we’re very close and we got to be that way sharing our love of musical theater by singing at the piano together or working on scripts and stories as a team. He doesn’t always understand my love of gaming or why I’d rather spend a Friday night playing D&D with friends than going out for a night on the town, but he always tries to at least fake it- which is endearing in its own way (especially when he signs his emails with the name of his level 4 druid, Caldyphron Lord of the Moon).
    This story really tapped into my appreciation for all the things that make father/child relationships so specific to each pair and I’m so glad you’re both enjoying your brewing collaboration together 🙂
    Can’t wait to hear about the name you all chose!

  36. Beautifully written. It still is odd to me that my generation and I are the parents now, but I wouldn’t trade being a mom to my 3 kids for anything in the world. It is obvious that you feel the same way about your kid. Thank you for this view into your real life.

  37. I can only hope my dad feels this way when I share my homebrews with him. We don’t brew together, but still.
    Also, as a veteran brewer, a word of advice — I’ve found that the smaller the brewery, the harder it is to get the labels off when you’re soaking/sanitizing. I live about a half a mile from the Sam Adams brewery in Boston, so most of my bottles come from there, and the labels practically slide off if you just lick your fingers. Same with Red Hook. Dogfish Head? Flying Dog? Yeah, good luck with those labels! (wouldn’t you think they’d try to save money by buying cheaper glue? I don’t know).
    Hope it tastes great! I’ve got a ton of recipes (and Beer Review Haikus) I can share, too.

  38. Wil, just bottled my first Hefeweizen last night, so these posts are very timely for me. I also just ordered a couple of the 1 gallon ingredient kits from Brookly Brew Shop, the IPA and the Tripel. Those’ll be my first all grain batches so I decided to start small. I’ve only done extracts before that.
    I can’t wait for your post after you try your first bottle. Oh, and don’t worry if you can’t wait the full 2 weeks…nobody here will tell if you won’t 😉

  39. Now I am totally pumped to make beer. My husband made it once, years ago, and still has all sorts of equipment. I told him to dig out the stuff again, and he asked, “Well, why are you NOW interested in making beer when you never were before??” Um, well, it’s because F’ing WIL WHEATON makes beer now, and he blogs about it! Can’t wait to hear the name for your IPA!
    Christine

  40. I’m going to guess by “eldrich power” that either he plays a Warlock or Death Knight or someone in his party did! I honestly wouldn’t be surprised to see you two crank out a few D&D or video game themed tasty beverages.
    Tell Ryan I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a few WoW homebrew recipies kicking around for Darkbrew Lager or Blood Red Ale either!

  41. Thanks for the advice! Most of our bottles are actually Stone, because that's what we drink the most of around here, and those are painted, so it isn't really an issue.

  42. If you want to save some time and effort sanitizing, I’ve seen some people run their bottles through the dishwasher, putting the starsan (or whatever sanitizer you use) where the soap normally goes.

  43. Sanitizing bottles with a dishwasher makes much quicker work of the task. Most dishwashers have a cycle that indicates “sanitize”. On mine, there are several, with “Light Wash” being the shortest.
    I load 2 cases of clean (I rinse when I drink ’em) into the dishwasher and run the cycle. When it’s done, the dishwasher’s still sealed, with the sanitized bottles upside down inside.
    I get the rest of my bottling gear ready and then put the carboy/fermenter on the counter above the dishwasher. I do the actual bottling on the open dishwasher door, which catches any spills and makes cleanup simply a matter of closing the door and the next time the dishwasher runs, it’s all cleaned up.
    While I do keg a bunch of stuff, when I want to bottle a batch, the actual effort is only about 45 minutes (plus some waiting for the dishwasher cycle to run).

  44. *sniff* Now I wish I had something like that with my dad. Of course, I don’t drink beer and he can’t so we’d need to find something else. I refuse to count power-washing and painting the house as a bonding activity.

  46. A great tip I’ve found is to cold-crash your beer at the end of the process. It’s simple – you just stick your secondary fermenter into the fridge for a couple days. It makes all the sediment fall to the bottom of the carboy, so your beer is nice and clear without filtration!
    They sell used soda kegs that hold about 5 gallons for pretty cheap – like $30. If you feel particularly ingenious, it’s not hard to put together an adapter to go from a paintball CO2 tank to the keg’s input (thanks, home depot). You can even pressurize the keg manually and save at least $50 on a pressure regulator.
    Caveats: Make sure you buy a new, empty paintball tank. Make sure it’s filled with food-grade CO2 (no oil!) Try to avoid brass fittings in any adapter you use, as CO2 will very slowly cause pitting (and probably some acid, which is not awesome).
    Keep the keg around 40psi in the fridge for a few days, checking maybe twice a day to add CO2 if you’re doing it by hand. If the beer isn’t cold, it can’t absorb as much CO2. After three or four days, let off the pressure until it’s ~5 psi, and it’s ready to drink! It will get a little better with age, but I’m happy without waiting 😛
    This way, there’s no worrying about whether or not your bottles will explode. There’s no nasty gunk in the bottom of your beer, and there won’t be flavor variance from one delicious glass to the next.

  47. Dude, (it’s ok if I call you dude, right? That’s not just Ryan’s thing?) What an incredible story! Thanks for opening a window into the personal life of Will Wheaton. Ryan’s a lucky kid, sounds like he knows it too.

  48. That’s a lovely story, and thanks for sharing it. I’m sad that my poor befuddled brain couldn’t come up with a name suggestion via Twitter the other night, but I’m sure that whatever you picked is far more clever than mine would have been anyway. I have a heck of a time naming characters in stories, let alone something as cool as this! Can’t wait to see it in all its glory!

  49. I loved reading this. Very heartwarming, yet not sappy. And from this post, I see that you don’t just love your son because he’s your son. You genuinely like him as a person. And that’s really amazing. Most parents don’t have that relationship with their kids. I’m lucky. Mine do. And my sister and her son have that kind of bond, too. Your post reminded me of that. And from what I can tell by this first impression, your son knows how lucky he is too.

  50. Great post Wil! Brewing should always be a shared hobby – it’s really cool you’re doing it with your son. I’ve read a post or two about your process and your beer will turn out fine. The one thing that that I’ve found with brewing is that some of my friends LOVE homebrew as a gift. What I do (when I have the selection) is put together a ‘sampler’ six pack. I print my own labels for each batch (usually with something cheesy like ‘Heine-Clone’ for a Heineken copy or whatever I find humorous at the time). Unlike going to store and grabbing a sixer that’s all the same, they can pick if they want a pilner or a porter.
    For myself, most of the time I’ll bottle into 22 oz. bottles. It’s a little more economical and it does save time sanitizing and capping.

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