Newbie questions....

[stevenhill]

Hi, Everyone

I'm pretty new to brewing but I'm getting there slowly, ignoring the last lot of vinegar I made, but I'm pretty sure I know what I did wrong.

Anyway... I'm making a pale ale from Dave Line's BBoB, and at the end i intend to bottle it rather than cask.

I'm a bit unsure about what the best strategy for priming is. I have read some that advocate half a teaspoon of white sugar per bottle, and some that say 1/2 a cup of dextrose is best dissolved in boiled water and added to a bottling bucket, before the wort is mixed in and bottled from there.

What are your thoughts?

If the latter is preferable, where do I get dextrose? I couldnt' see it on the homebrew shops online, except in 'beer accelerator kits'

Thanks in advance

[Matt]

Hi Steve,

Stand by for experts arriving soon, but as a newb myself I have found the following useful …

http://oz.craftbrewer.org/Library/Metho ... uide.shtml

I shoot for medium carbonation and use 28g of Glucose (brewing sugar) per gallon, bulk primed. Smiles all round so far.

Cheers,
Matt

[mysterio]

Here's another useful site Steven: http://www.tastybrew.com/calculators/priming.html

It lets you put in desired amount of carbonation based on the style of beer and the volume and calculates how much sugar you should bulk prime with. It's in US gallons (remember to modify it for UK gallons) so heres what I got for 2 volumes of CO2 and 5 UK gallons:

Glucose (dextrose or corn sugar) 3.5 oz
Sucrose (table sugar) 3.3 oz

I say go for the bulk priming, less fuss, more consistent results and less chance of an infection as you're boiling the sugar beforehand. I usually dissolve the sugar in a pyrex jug with about 200mls of water, microwave it until boiling and let it sit for 15 minutes or so with the power off. Remember to give it a good stir in the bottling bucket without splashing the beer. Dextrose is another word for Glucose or brewing sugar and you can get it from homebrew shops (brewing sugar) and some supermarkets (my co-op has some). If you can't find it, table sugar is fine in small amounts for priming IMO (although some may disagree). Note that it is more fermentable than dextrose and you require less. I would still tend to bulk prime with it because it can be quite hard to dissolve in the bottle.

[Vossy1]

Hi Stevenhill,

I simply use 1/2 a teaspoon of glucose (available cheaply from chemist) per bottle.

I add it to the bottle using a funnel after I've sanitised the bottle and then add the beer.

It will reach an o.k level of carbonation after 2 weeks.

If I find it's too carbonated for my liking when poured from the bottle I simple give it a quick stir with a fork to get rid of some of the co2

Simple, and I haven't had a bad bottle yet

[fizzypop boy]

I hope Vossy thats a shiny ss funnel and not plastic.

[stevenhill]

Thankyou, Everyone

That's very helpful.

I look forward to sampling the fruits of my labours, and not pickling with it like last time.




Steve

[TheBigEasy]

I look forward to sampling the fruits of my labours, and not pickling with it like last time.

Steve,
What did you do so drastically wrong on your previous brew that made you throw it away?

As to teh original question I am a bulk primer, when I do, as you get more consistent results.

Good luck with your next brew and let us know what happens.

[stevenhill]

well...

firstly, I think I let the water go low on the mash... so there wasnt' that much wort.

Then I had to improvise a sparging system which was a bit lash up in the back garden on a table using a colinder to hold only half the grain and my brew kettle to provide the water. I then had to sparge the other half of the grain but i had no proper sparge-head, so I had a stream rather than a shower of sparge water. I guess this created channels and I also kept moving the grain around to get some water under it, which doubtless stirred up some less desirable constituents.

I also noticed that the grain was still quite sweet after I had finished sparging.

Also... because the colinder was so small, it kept overflowing and running into the colletor barrel.

Then I boiled it (without checking gravity or collected quantity) that went ok as I have a good bruheat barrel.

Hops: that went ok

Then I had to transfer it and cool it. I had no hop strainer, and no means of cooling, so I had to sit and watch the 1ml per second flow that managed to get past the hop-clogged tap.

I'm sure this let a ton of oxygen get to the beer and took so long to cool down to pitching temperature.

When the temperature dropped, I pitched with my yeast starter which went ok.

I left it a week and transfered it into fermentor No.2 but I noticed there was way too little water, a consequence of not paying attention to the amount of wort I collected.

So I figured I could boil a few pints of water and top it up a bit. I did let it cool so as not to murder the yeast.

I left the lid on the secondary fermenter on, but not tight (no airlock), so I suspect the main source of contamination was then, as the protective crust and layer of CO2 was gone.

After about a week the 'beer' went a distinctly darker colour, and tasted quite horribly like vinegar, the SG wouldn't drop below 1018 either. I've not figured that one out yet.

I put some in three bottles to experiment with carbonation. After a couple of weeks i opened them and there was no cabonation at all... just a dark brown cloudy liquid that was only any use to make pennies shiny...

All in all, rubbish....!

So.... back to the books and the net. I made myself a hop strainer from a copper pipe with many holes drilled in it, this worked brilliantly.

I also made a sparger using various bits of hose and a watering can rose, (also very effective) and i aquired a proper airlock for fermenter No.2 and wrote many notes before starting.

This time:

-I checked and collected the right quantities of wort and sparged wort.

-Checked the gravity

-Made a wort cooler using 10m of copper pipe and some hose and chilled the wort very quickly.

-Pitched

-kept everything covered.

-I'm only at first fermentation, so I hope I can keep up the good work.


That leads me to a question: during this brew when I found I was losing water through evaporation during boiling, I covered up a bit to minimise the loss, but is it ok to add a little water during the boil to make up the difference? I did run a kettle or 2 full of hot water of the hop bed to make sure I collected the right amount of wort.

Brew 1 was a bit of a catalogue of errors, but hopefully this time will be alot better.


Thanks

[Andy]

Sounds like you were well prepared then!



It'll get easier with the good advice on here

[stevenhill]

Yeah..

I was somewhat underequipped... I thought I'd 'McGuyver' a solution...

wrong..

[Vossy1]

Hope this brew goes o.k for you SH

[PieOPah]

That leads me to a question: during this brew when I found I was losing water through evaporation during boiling, I covered up a bit to minimise the loss, but is it ok to add a little water during the boil to make up the difference? I did run a kettle or 2 full of hot water of the hop bed to make sure I collected the right amount of wort.

Firstly, when you boil, never cover you boiler to stop evaporation. Basically this stops undesirables from the hops escaping. This causes an unpleasant bitterness to go back into your beer.

Rather than adding water to the boil (this only server to lower you gravity) it would be preferable to collect more wort from you mash and then add this.

Personally I batch sparge so don't really bother with various gravity checks during collection except purely for my own curiosity (I am going to be slightly modifying my procedure though due to some recent problems). Anyway, it sounds like you Fly Sparge and from everything I have read about this method, the best thing to do is to keep on sparging until you have an gravity reading of 1.010. This will probably mean that you end up with more wort than you need, but it also means that you have more wort to add to you boil.

Hope that this helps.

[stevenhill]

It sure does help...

I'll learn, a few less than perfect batches are i think a price worth paying, if I get it right in the end.

When you say that adding water to the boil will reduce it's concentration, I'm a little confused. I figured that if the water was boiling away, then the wort would become more concentrated.. so, if i add more water, the concentration and the volume would remain constant. That's assuming that none of the solute is evaporating with the steam, of course.

i did follow a recipe that called for 6 gallons of wort collected before the boil to produce 4.75 gallons finally, so i didn't add much water. I just wanted to make sure i collected teh right amount.

I will follow your tips next time.

Cheers.

[PieOPah]

It all depends on your target gravity. Yes as the wort boils it becomes more concentrated. If you don't want a higher gravity then you can dilute with water to reach your target.

At the end of the day it is all about experimenting and enjoying yourself.

[TheBigEasy]

At the end of the day it is all about experimenting and enjoying yourself.

And drinking loads of cheap beer PoP.

Oh and having nice shiny things.