Emptying bottles is one of my favorite parts of homebrewingOh, and I am drinking our local lager to stock up on bottles.
Now how is that for an excuse?
What are you doing with homebrew today?
- Thread starter BOB357
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If nothing else, it'll silence any whine from that pump.
I just racked off a brown called Workie Ticket this morning. This site calls it a Standard/Ordinary Bitter based on the recipe, but it's much darker than the calculated color, and has a pretty good load of maltodextrin in it for body. Perhaps a "light" brown? My distributor calls it a brown, much like another one called McSorley's Black and Tan.
I'm letting it settle a little before I start bottling. Can't wait too long though, because the priming sugar is already in it. It always starts bubbling again from the trub when I rack it off. Next batch will get a secondary ferment after 1 week to see if that helps clarify it some. This brew makes a very thick trub compared to other "standard bitter" ales. Some of my favorites don't generate much more than about a half inch of trub. This one is nearly 3 times that, and tends go dormant at a fairly high FG, which makes it hard to rack it clean off the primary. When I get down to about 2 gallons left in the fermenter, there's continuous bubbling coming from the trub and with that, clouding. My storage spot is a few degrees warmer than my fermenting spot, so that helps wake up the yeasty beasties for conditioning. Thermometer said 66 this morning when I brought it up. Bumping that to 70 or so for the last couple days should help with the FG, and hopefully the flocculation. Otherwise, I'm going to be forced to using additional flocculants to settle the beer before I bottle. Maybe a different yeast to improve attenuation and flocculation, or perhaps make a starter with some Pils with the Lalbrew Nottingham packet. I'd like to improve the FG on this one and make it clearer to see if the elevated bitterness is caused by it getting cloudy on packaging.
Has anyone waited overnight after priming before bottling? I don't want to ruin the beer, but it would make me a lot happier to get rid of some of the cloudiness. Herm, you bottle, what's your thought? Ever get that stubborn recipe that just seems to be a PITA with sediment. I normally make up my primer and put that in my bottling bucket, then just let the beer swirl in to mix it as it siphons off. That prevents sticking a paddle in it and eliminates one risk of infection. I use StarSan on everything that will touch the beer prior to racking it and try to keep the buckets covered as much as possible while I'm handling it to the bottles.
Maybe it's time for electronic monitoring to help me get a better idea of what's happening in the fermenter. Always improving is my target.
Bottles washed and ready, just waiting a bit for settling.
The priming sugar is for CO2 production via the yeast. If you add sugar and then wait 24 hrs to bottle, all of that CO2 is escaping your fermenter instead of being trapped in a capped bottle. Also the yeast will begin fermentation again, so any nicely sedimented yeast in the bottom of your fermenter will begin to rise into suspension again, making your beer cloudy.
Yes, I bottle, but have never dosed the priming sugar in the fermenter. Today I will make my priming solution, then dose each bottle via syringe prior to filling directly from the fermenter using a bottling wand. Generally, my beers pour with chill haze, which tends to clear as I sip. Never have I noticed any sediment in my glass, though I am careful to leave behind sediment in the bottle (just a small amount, though).
What herm and sunfire said and a cold crash will help with your sediment issues but if your waiting a couple of weeks before bottling time and gravity will do the same as a.two day 0c cold crash.
Either that or put the fermentor outside overnight I'm sure youse are getting some pretty chilly temps.
Yup try something different I wouldn't add the priming solution to the fermentor.
Either that or put the fermentor outside overnight I'm sure youse are getting some pretty chilly temps.
Yup try something different I wouldn't add the priming solution to the fermentor.
Exactly what I thought (about the waiting part), so I try not to let it sit more than an hour or so after racking from the fermenter. The whole racking process is generally where I see the cloudiness start. As the volume drops in the fermenter, I see bubbles start to rise out of the trub, and with them, usually a stream of sediment. Racking it to another fermenter bucket would be the same exact thing as a secondary ferment, would it not? I don't see much difference in waiting two weeks to bottle and fermenting for another two weeks after a transfer to a clean vessel. Maybe I'm missing something, though.
I don't put the priming sugar in the fermenter. I guess I didn't explain my process very well. I can't see a way to blend the priming uniformly with the beer in the fermenter without disturbing the trub, and besides that, I don't have a spigot on my fermenting buckets, so couldn't bottle from the fermenter bucket if I wanted to. If I do decide to go that route, I'll likely use the Cooper's tablets for priming. My BIL in Port Pirie, SA used them when he brewed and was quite pleased with the results. They're available in bulk on Amazon. For the now, I make the primer solution with boiling water, boil an additional 5 minutes, cool it, then put that in my bottling bucket to sit until I get all the bottles prepped. That keeps it sterile until it's cool enough to not kill off the yeast in the first bit of beer that goes into the bucket. Not sure that would matter much considering a 5-gallon batch and it might even enhance the beer (a little) in conditioning since dead yeast is apparently also yeast nutrient. Dunno. Then, as gently as possible with an auto siphon, I rack the fermenter to the bottling bucket which gently swirls the mix in the bottling bucket as it fills because I leave a couple coils of the tubing in the bottom to 'spin' the mix. No bubbles that way, no paddle, nothing but a hose that I just finished sanitizing in the beer. I draw as much from the fermenter as I can without getting into the trub, and usually waste about a half inch above the trub, depending on how easily the yeast cake is to stir up. Then, I put the bottling bucket up on the table and give the primer an hour or so to wake the yeast back up, as well as to allow any incidental krausen or trub to settle below the spigot.
Some batches, I get crystal clear results, but I've noticed that yeasts with lower flocculence are my nemesis, or perhaps it's the extracts with specialty grains. Any whole grain batches I've done I have to say hands down were the clearest and cleanest. The yeasts that give me headaches at bottling time also tend to be the yeasts that give the best results for what I prefer. Funny that, eh? I've noticed some better performance from making starters, such as lower FG, and better flocculation. Maybe it's a water thing, dunno. Maybe I should consider always using a starter, even making one from dry yeast. That may become a thing when I have a place to keep my starters cold.
I don't worry about chill haze. I expect it in an ale, especially if I put it in a chilled glass, and that's rarely going to have time to settle before the glass is empty. Some ales are naturally cloudy (Blue Moon/Rapier Wit certainly is). I just don't like it when I know a batch is supposed to be pretty clear, and I repeatedly wind up with cloudy beer or heavy sediment in the bottles. The last batch of the Big Wave knockoff I did was wonderfully clear in the bottle, and actually drinkable from the bottle without too much sediment issue. There wasn't even much chill haze on that one. One of the best brews I've ever done, I think. I rarely used a glass on that batch. Pretty sure what little sediment was in the bottles from that batch was only the yeast from conditioning because it was snow white. Most of what I'm grumping about is a tan color sediment (trub), meaning it was in the beer when the beer went in the bottle. I'm pretty sure that's doing some bad things to my beer during conditioning. I have an all-grain Leffe Abbey Blonde coming up soon, so I'll try to take better notes about the results and see if I did anything different from the partial mash version that I did.
I don't have a way to cold crash, unfortunately. Maybe one day, when I build a keezer for fermenting and lagering. I'll entertain any offered suggestions/opinions for upright versus chest type freezer for that purpose. I have an old chest freezer already and might just replace it with a newer upright model for the missus. Chest types are better for large items that can easily stack, but not so much for little two-serving packs of english peas. Small or lesser used items tend to filter to the bottom and get old. I will probably still store/condition in bottles because of the convenience of not having to go downstairs every time I want a glass of beer, or I may switch to keg storage and fill a few bottles or growlers at a time when I need refills and keep it at low pressure with CO2. That gets rid of the need for priming sugar, and there's something to be said for that. I have a lot more room in the garage now to put a keezer and maybe a kegerator, but the missus and youngest granddaughter are taking over pretty fast with their hobbies. Don't guess I can complain after she let me spend nearly $25K on a new tractor shop, but something tells me a new kitchen is the next project.
BTW, did you find a good syringe like you wanted? I found the one I bought for garage work. In fact, I used it to clean up a little oil from a small engine I have broken down at the moment. I'll try to remember to get the name-brand next time I'm out in the shop. It'll probably hold enough priming solution for at least twenty 12 oz bottles before you have to draw some more. It's not a basting syringe like I thought, it's an injection syringe, so comes with a rather large needle that will make folks with needle phobias pass out. I just slipped a piece of vinyl tubing over the needle and it works beautifully for what I got it for. It would just seem like more trouble to me to have to measure each bottle's sugar, but I can see where it might be a preference. That the priming sugar really doesn't affect the flavor makes me content with just mixing it in with the batch before bottling. Obviously, bottling from the fermenter precludes that notion. Did you consider the Cooper's tablets? If you tried them and didn't like them, I'd love to hear why.
I use the Cooper's tablets when I bottle, they seem to work okay. I'm considering going back to a priming sugar solution to dial in my carbonation better. I will likely use a syringe to dose each bottle because I bottle from the fermenter.
When you pour the beer from the bottle into a glass are you pouring the whole thing?
Actually, the last few days have been quite warm, between 20 and 25 C during the day, probably around 10-15 at night. Not cold enough. But, that does give me some ideas, if I can get permission to put something out there to keep the light off it. I have an old plastic tool box from my pickup (ute) that I can use. For that matter, no climate control in the shop would help with the cold at night, but not so sure about the last couple days with it getting so warm. We have very cyclic winter weather here. COLD (-10 C or so), windy, clear, then calming and warming for a few days, then rain, usually followed up by freezing temps again. You can almost set your watch by it. Just had heavy rain today, so expecting a cold morning tomorrow.
Not usually. I pour pretty slow so I don't slosh it and stir up what I don't want. One of the primary reasons I started using a glass was the sediment. Drinking from the bottle (tipping it and putting it back down) stirrs the sediment too much for my liking. Just kinda bothers me to consume something single cell organisms didn't want. I leave just enough in the bottle usually to slosh around and knock the sediment loose, then immediately rinse the bottle and invert it to drain so the stuff doesn't dry in the bottle. I watch when I pour, and when I see the milky yeast start to come out, I know it's time to stop. I don't mind the white yeast, but I'm not fond of sludge that looks like it came out of an oil pan on an engine with a blown head gasket. The amount I get is pretty variable, even on different batches of the same recipe. The one I expect the worst trub from is my chocolate oatmeal stout, but apparently, the flaked oats help goo all the fines together and settle it out. Go figger. The trub in that is almost like pudding.
That's perfect and that's what I've done in winter here our cold night in winter is what 5c lol. Just say in man you want rock solid compacted trub crash that thing then let me know
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Don't get any ideas come Christmass Day lol!
Umm, no, I won't. Not likely I'd fool anyone with it anyway. Too many witnesses when I brew, LOL.
Best excuse ever!Oh, and I am drinking our local lager to stock up on bottles.
Now how is that for an excuse?
Maybe that's what I'll do on the next batch, then, time the bottling around a cold snap. On occasion, this time of year, we have freezing temps at night that don't warm up at all during the next day, and may in fact get even colder. Depends on whether or not our Canadian neighbors forget to close their back door. I lived up in Kentucky for a while, and spent three winters up there. EVERY year, right around Christmas, the temperature would drop to -10F (-28C) and stay there for 10 days or more. I HATE cold weather, especially since I've gotten older and my body is better at predicting weather than any meteorologist could ever be. The degree of pain is directly proportional to how bad the weather is going to be.That's perfect and that's what I've done in winter here our cold night in winter is what 5c lol. Just say in man you want rock solid compacted trub crash that thing then let me know
Thinking about doing my Leffe Abbey brew tomorrow, but the high is going to be something like 4 C all day, and the low will probably be around -10 C tomorrow night. It's usually very windy when the rain blows through for a couple days, so keeping the burner lit can be a challenge. I'll probably be hugging the brew kettle to keep warm. Next weekend, we're back up in the 20's (C) again, and rain all weekend. Planning ANYTHING for outdoors around here is usually accompanied by a lot of weather studies. Might be smarter to put off the brew until around Thursday.
So, when I get ready to bottle that one, I'll watch for a cold snap close to 3 weeks after brewing, but at least 3 weeks, and get the old toolbox set up to put the fermenter in. I'll give it a spin. One night around 0 C is good as you say, but what happens if it freezes? Not sure how low the temp can go on 5-8% alcohol before freezing, and I'm pretty sure the yeast isn't gonna like it if I freeze the batch. Your thoughts? I'd prefer not to stay up all night to protect it and then wind up ruining the crash too. How long do I need to maintain the cold temps? When the weather goes goofy here, it goes REAL goofy. One day, we get 18 inches of snow, the next day we're out in short sleeves cleaning up the mess it made. The anniversary of my first marriage was 12/03 (I wrote that backward for you). I drove from North Carolina headfirst through Atlanta with 3 inches of ice on the bridges and got up the next day with 5-foot snow drifts in our back yard. I live in Alabama because it doesn't snow here. Usually.
I look forward to your success fingers crossed
@RoadRoach A 5% abv solution freezes at about 29 F / -2 C.
