Help with first brew

[elementmetal]

Hi all

I'm BRAND new to all this.

On sunday 8th March i started to brew the Coopers IPA in the 5 gallon fermenting bucket.
This was kept in my box room upstairs (possibly a bit on the warm side). Anyway, it started ferminting very well by monday morning.
By Thursday all was settled down.

On Fri sat and sunday i did hydrometer reading and it was sat in the middle of the black band (which i think means ok to bottle).

I'm planning on bottling tonight.

Questions:

1) have i left it too late to bottle (its been 9 days)
2) some of the bottles i have are the cheap supermarket stubbys , if i use 1/4 teaspoon of sugar in these and leave about 2 inches from cap do you think these will survive conditioning?

Any advise on conditioning and amount of sugar to use would be greatly appreciated. I dont have a second bucket and will be syphoning straight into the bottles using sugar from teaspoons.

I have about 50 bottles ranging from cheap supermarket stubbys to Newcastle Brown Ale bottles. I have a COUPLE of plastic 2 litre bottles which the still water came in when i was brewing at first.

Will these be ok to use.

Thanks in advance

Adam

[jonnyhop]

1. No, it will be fine

2. Roughly speaking you want ½ a teaspoon in a 500ml bottle so you should therefore be looking at 1/3 a spoon for a 330ml bottle (I am guessing your stubby bottle size.) I think that it is worth finding the right amount of sugar for your beer – I personally add more priming sugar to larger and less to IPA. Put the beer in the bottles first, then the sugar as doing it the other way around can lead to your beer fizzing out of the bottle. Seal it then give it a good shake. If you are using plastic bottles you can tell when its done by feeling the bottle – when the bottle feels hard the beer should be fizzy. The longer you leave it though, the better it will taste!

Jonny

[mope]

1) No, anything up to ~3 weeks is fine in your primary (the dead yeast may affect the beers flavour after this time), and perhaps even longer from a secondary.
2) These should be fine. Make sure you use the correct amount of priming sugar for the size of bottle, Coopers recommend 8g/100cl, so scale this down for your bottles. Fill the bottles to the level at which they were when you bought them, usually just above the point where the neck thins out.

edit: Always get beaten when typing a reply, must be a slow typer!

[mwt666]

I thought it was supposed to be best having bottles where the previous beer had been bottle conditioned - or is that a complete myth?

[Benson_JV]

I thought it was supposed to be best having bottles where the previous beer had been bottle conditioned - or is that a complete myth?

Well a lot of people use PET bottles (Cola, Lemonade and the likes)
Although if using glass ones it's dangerous not to use thick glass (bottle conditioned beer bottles are great, glass is nice and thick)

[elementmetal]

Cheers for the advice guys.

Bottled it all last night. Followed some tips such as after sterilising bottles, stand them upside down in dishwasher etc etc to drain.

When it came to bottling i had a mixture of old Stella bottles, Carona, Black sheep, Bombadier, Bier de Moulin (cheap supermarket lager), Peroni etc etc.

I worked out how much of a teaspoon of sugar to go in each bottle type approx. Put the beer in (leaving at least a generous inch and half gap between beer and cap), added the sugar, capped then inverted/shook the bottles about 3 times each until you could see a little fiz on top of the beer.

All in all there are over 80 bottles now. I've put the cheap supermarket stubby bottles back into the (now clean) fermenting bucket with lid on so if those cheap glass bottles DO blow then at least the fermenting bucket should take the majority of the blast.

Only had one incident which was one of the cheap stubby bottles cracking around the top when trying to cap. Binned it. So all in all only lost one bottle.

Cant wait to taste it. Going to leave it for 1 week in the house and a further 2 or 3 weeks in the shed to mature.

[Benson_JV]

Cant wait to taste it. Going to leave it for 1 week in the house and a further 2 or 3 weeks in the shed to mature.

But of course, a little taster bottle as soon as it drops clear wont hurt

[KevP]

Cant wait to taste it. Going to leave it for 1 week in the house and a further 2 or 3 weeks in the shed to mature.

But of course, a little taster bottle as soon as it drops clear wont hurt

Like I always say- Be rude not to

[brysie]

i always bottle a couple of half pint bottles as a matter of course now especially for early sampling.

[elementmetal]

Cant wait to taste it. Going to leave it for 1 week in the house and a further 2 or 3 weeks in the shed to mature.

But of course, a little taster bottle as soon as it drops clear wont hurt

You've twisted my arm