Bottling Technique

[Martin the fish]

When it comes to competition bottling do you HAVE to have sediment in the bottles. I remember two "old" people on a table near by at the Manchester Competition complaining that Federation Rules state that there must be sediment.

I'd be alright then-there's always loads in my beers

[MacDuck]

sediment in the bottle - erm, is there any way to decrease the amount of sediment?

How do commercially bottled conditioned beers manage to have sop little sediment? My bottles allways have LOADS!!

[The Mighty Badger]

Perhaps the sediment in a commercial 'bottle conditioned' is a token effort to qualify for the title. A tiny bit of sugar + a tiny bit of yeast to eat it = little sediment that looks nice on the supermarket shelf

This may be cynical but I'm having one of those days...

[Barley Water]

I usually just force carbonate but sometimes I want to naturally carbonate (like with wheat beer or some Belgians). What works pretty well for me is to ferment all the way down then make up a small starter with the amount of DME I want to add (which varies depending on how much carbonation I am looking for). I then just keg the entire batch and shake the hell out of the keg to make sure the the unfermented sugars are evenly disbursed in the keg. I then sanitize the bottles I want to fill as well as a cobra tap and then simply fill the bottles and cap them (or cork them) as usual. To get the liquid to move out of the keg I just hook up my CO2 bottle and push the uncarbonated beer into the bottles with a couple pounds of pressure. After two or three weeks at room temperature everything is carbonated and ready to go. I figure this method minimizes air contact and reduces the chance for infection plus it is easy (which is of course the major reason for doing it this way).

[Wobbler]

I then just keg the entire batch and shake the hell out of the keg...........

...........I figure this method minimizes air contact

Wouldn't a gentle stir also help minimise the air contact?

[Barley Water]

If the keg was open a gentle stir would minimize air contact but I do this with the keg closed. In fact, I also get rid of the air in the headspace by filling it with CO2 and blowing it out the relief value a few times. Once I'm done, I just roll the keg around on the floor while I watch TV or whatever. Sorry about that, I guess I don't express myself all that well at times.

[nobby]

sediment in the bottle - erm, is there any way to decrease the amount of sediment?

How do commercially bottled conditioned beers manage to have sop little sediment? My bottles allways have LOADS!!

I leave my beer 2 weeks from brew date in the FV. In the morning of I add 80 grams of brewing sugar. Then bottle in the evening and have very little sediment and what there is it stuck to the bottom. I also use Nottingham Yeast.

[Wobbler]

If the keg was open a gentle stir would minimize air contact but I do this with the keg closed. In fact, I also get rid of the air in the headspace by filling it with CO2 and blowing it out the relief value a few times. Once I'm done, I just roll the keg around on the floor while I watch TV or whatever. Sorry about that, I guess I don't express myself all that well at times.

At least you're purging most of the O2 before shaking. Still seams a waste of CO2 to me though.

Couldn't you draw off a small amount of the beer, mix in your DME, then boil it for a short while. If that mix was put in the barrel before racking, there'd be no need to shake, or purge.

[the_great_okapi]

...the yeast remove oxygen from the beer during bottle priming, reducing oxidation products that we can (just about) taste.

I guess bottling the beer or transfering to a keg exposes the beer to oxygen, and the active yeast use this up, removing it from the beer. In the keg, with no fuel, they just sit there and let the beer get oxidised.

If anybody would be so kind to test this theory with a monster batch (half kegged and forced-carbonated, half kegged and primed) I would be very interested to hear the results!

[Barley Water]

True but I would still have to at least stir a little to make sure the heavy DME "starter" didn't sink down to the bottom. The whole time I was stirring, the beer would be effectively open to the air. What I do when I keg is first force all the air out of the keg with CO2 (air being lighter, it gets foreced out the top). I then rack the beer out of secondary into the keg which is under a nice layer of CO2. I then add the "DME starter" and close the keg (after which I get rid of any O2 the snuck in). That way, the majority of the beer is only exposed to the air while I am racking it into the keg.

I am kind of like Aleman in that I get bored real quickly filling bottles. This way, I can take my time and fill just the few bottles I need for a competition or whatever after which the keg is ready to go after conditioning for a couple of weeks. If you don't make sure the starter is well disbursed in the keg, you will end up with more unfermented sugars getting into the bottles as anticipated since the pickup tubes in the kegs are at the bottom (and the DME starter is heavier than the beer so it should sink to the bottom of the keg). To me, this is much, much easier than cleaning and running a counterpressure filler to just fill a few bottles.

[Wobbler]

Each to their own then I suppose. It just doesn't seem like best practice in my eyes to shake the living daylights out of the finished beer.

I often rack into a bottling bucket that has the priming sugars added first. The motion of the beer filling into the bucket mixes in the sugar solution well enough for me.