A few weeks ago, for my son’s 12th birthday, we brewed his first batch of homebrew and documented the day as Porter’s Porter Day. The beer was ready to be bottled last weekend, but we only got around to it yesterday. It went surprisingly smoothly.

Porter having some fun while sterilizing the bottles, which Vinnie Cilurzo from Russian River Brewing was kind enough to donate.

Both Porter and his little sister Alice were on hand to help.

Alice seemed to enjoy filling the bottles.

I worked the capper, but everybody contributed to the effort.

Porter kept the bottles flowing, from the drying rack to his sister.

But Porter also took his turn filling bottles, too.

While I was really the only one who could use the capper.

Eventually, we ran out of beer and filled the final bottle.

Our yield was about 8 gallons, which filled 57 sixteen ounce bottles, which are now bottle-conditioning in the beer cellar. In a few weeks Porter and I will be on the Brewing Network’s Sunday Show and I’ll taste the results, along with the rest of the adults on the show. Fingers crossed, hopefully it won’t suck. But either way, it’s been great fun homebrewing with my son.