Bottling Moral

[CJBrew]

Moral: Stir your beer in the bottling bucket, when you've added a syrup!

After filling 40 bottles yesterday, I poured the very last dregs (about 50ml) into a glass and tasted it ; almost pure sugar. Then tasted the last-filled bottle. Gah! Sugar! Then the first-filled bottle. No sugar at all!

It is boring to empty all the beer back into the bucket and start again. I'm just glad I noticed before about a quarter of the bottles burst and none of the rest were unprimed

[OldSpeckledBadger]

You could always do it properly. Decant off into another bucket/FV containing the priming sugar dissolved in water. As the beer goes in it creates a mixing circulation which distribute the priming sugar evenly throughout the beer.

[GeordieBrewer]

Ouch!

Can I ask a couple of questions CJ?

Firstly, did you syphon from your Seconday into you bottling bucket? and assuming the syphon tube was as the bottle of the bucked did you? :

Add the syrup to the bottom of the bucket totally?
Add half of the solution at the bottom, and the other half, around halfway through transfer?
or
Transfer all the beer to the bottling bucket, then pour the syrup in?

Also, what did you use to make the syrup up? I tend to use about 300ml boiling water with 70g Ivert sugar, and then cooled to below 30 degrees before adding to the bottom of the bucket.
I'm not sure how good my method is, but seems a reasonable distribution.... certainly no bottle bombs, and no flat pints!

I just could never be chewed to pipette equal proprtions of syrup/sugar solution into each bottle! (have enough to deal with trying to prevent oxidation or airborne contamination!

[a-slayer]

Why bother to prime your bottles, I never do. Always seems to be enough residual sugars to give the bottle some life after a couple of weeks.

[trucker5774]

I almost always add my priming sugar in a solution of 200 to 300ml of water direct to the FV after about 10 days. I only transfer to a 2nd FV for bottling if I want to reuse the yeast in the primary FV. I have never had a bottle over or under carbonated and never oxygenated a brew

[CJBrew]

You could always do it properly. Decant off into another bucket/FV containing the priming sugar dissolved in water. As the beer goes in it creates a mixing circulation which distribute the priming sugar evenly throughout the beer.

Uh, that's precisely what I did, and what I always did. For some reason the mixing circulation didn't really work this time.

Firstly, did you syphon from your Seconday into you bottling bucket?

Yep

and assuming the syphon tube was as the bottle of the bucked did you? :

interesting assumption

Add the syrup to the bottom of the bucket totally?

Yes

Add half of the solution at the bottom, and the other half, around halfway through transfer?
or
Transfer all the beer to the bottling bucket, then pour the syrup in?

I like the half and half idea... I also think adding the syrup afterwards would be likely to lead to syrup all just falling to the bottom of the bucket

Also, what did you use to make the syrup up? I tend to use about 300ml boiling water with 70g Ivert sugar, and then cooled to below 30 degrees before adding to the bottom of the bucket.

I used about 120g sugar in about 1/3 of a pint, boiled. This amount tends to work OK for me. I also hardly ever bother letting it cool that much -- maybe to 60' or so. As it's a small amount, being added to many litres of beer I can't see that it makes much difference.

[GeordieBrewer]

Hi, CJ,

Sounds like we follow a fairly similar method.... I've not really come across the problems you've experienced and always had a fairly even distribution, however I do always gently stir the beer trying to avoid adding oxygen, but theoretically, there should be a layer of CO2 sitting on top which should prevent this..

Scientifically speaking *with my limited knowledge of science" I vent the bottling bucket with a squirt of CO2, then transfer the beer from the secondary... then left with a bottling bucket full of beer with a layer of C02 on top, most of the air will have been expelled. Therefore giving it a bit of a stir shouldn't give too many problems.

120g sounds like a lot of sugar to me.... I normally use 70g max, but my last lager style I upped it to 110g.... this is the most I've ever used - the bottles are currently sat covered up in the Shower Tray in the en-suite... think I'll stick the safety glasses on when I move them, just in case

Soz for my awful spelling.... and yep... bottle of the bucked was supposed to be bottom of the bucket

Cheers!

[CJBrew]

120g sounds like a lot of sugar to me.... I normally use 70g max, but my last lager style I upped it to 110g.... this is the most I've ever used - the bottles are currently sat covered up in the Shower Tray in the en-suite... think I'll stick the safety glasses on when I move them, just in case

Soz for my awful spelling.... and yep... bottle of the bucked was supposed to be bottom of the bucket

Well, I've used that much sugar for about 7 years and had very few over-carbonated beers... The over-fizzy ones have been the very occasional gushers. My beer usually has a nice soft ale-style carbonation (although this beer was a german wheat beer style).

It's interesting that you get a similar result with half the amount of sugar. I suppose there's a chance I might be slightly sweetening the bottled product with residual priming sugar. But (probably more likely) the amount of carbonation is not linearly related to the amount of priming sugar.

I don't know how much difference the amount of headspace in a bottle makes to the carbonation but I've heard it does have an affect. I tend to leave about 2cm at the top of a 500ml bottle, or a little less.

Oh, as for the "bucked" thing, I wasn't commenting on the spelling! I meant that was probably the root of the problem this time!