1st AG bottled

[Rob11TC]

Bottled my 1st AG brew today (St Austell tribute)
Coming from kits, are AG brews more "dirty"? Had a lot of suspended yeast lumps that I want expecting so quick dash to get a strainer! Some smaller bits will have gone into my bottling bucket and no doubt into a few bottles, hope it will be ok. Any tips for future brews?
On a plus note, managed to get a woodfordes wherry kit done and bubbling away!

 

[obscure]

I have found that my all grain brews tend to have a lot of trub and tend to loose about 1 to 2 litres to it ( I use BIAB). Thus I have gotten into the habit of running it through a muslin square when I keg.

 

[Leon103]

Cold crash before bottling and major sure you leave at least 2 weeks before bottling. Also depends on the yeast you are using

 

[Drunkula]

I started to vorlauf with biab recently and the amount of gunk in the fermenter dropped hugely. And like Obscure I put a colander above the fermenter with a brew bag in it and run the wort through that. Huge reduction in gunk.

 

[matt76]

Congrats on your first AG, welcome to the dark side

My tip would be, once you've chilled your wort let it settle for 2-4 hours. Then you can drain via the tap if you have one (or if not, syphon) crystal clear wort to the FV.

I learned this the hard way and went from 1-2L of crud in my FV to zero. And if you're only doing 10-12L batches like me then that's a big difference! Also means less crud in your bottles = more beer in your glass

Extra tip: transfer the crud to a sanitised container (2 or 5L water bottles are good), then leave it to settle out overnight or a day or two - you can then use this to top up your FV with more crystal clar wort.

 

[obscure]

Congrats on your first AG, welcome to the dark side

My tip would be, once you've chilled your wort let it settle for 2-b,4 hours. Then you can drain via the tap if you have one (or if not, syphon) crystal clear wort to the FV.

I learned this the hard way and went from 1-2L of crud in my FV to zero. And if you're only doing 10-12L batches like me then that's a big difference! Also means less crud in your bottles = more beer in your glass

.

I’ve found that while it’s not hugely difficult to reduce the amount of trub, (running the hot wort through a filter has made a difference on my most recent batch (about 1L loss instead of 2L on 11.5L) you can also take the lazy option and slightly increase your batch size. I use 9.5 L kegs, so 11.5L to the fermenter and can fill my keg plus an extra bottle on the side. Extra cost in terms of hops and grain is tiny,.

That said I am curious if you have seen an improvement in taste, or just in yield?

 

[The Baron]

I too let my wort chill and settle for usually an hour and then run through my hop spider ala pic mind I do no chill and only get a little gunk left in my boil kettle

 

[An Ankoù]

Bottled my 1st AG brew today (St Austell tribute)
Coming from kits, are AG brews more "dirty"? Had a lot of suspended yeast lumps that I want expecting so quick dash to get a strainer! Some smaller bits will have gone into my bottling bucket and no doubt into a few bottles, hope it will be ok. Any tips for future brews?
On a plus note, managed to get a woodfordes wherry kit done and bubbling away!

Bravo and well done. Another one to chalk up. If it tasted good when you put it in, it'll taste good when you pour it out. The beer should be pretty clear when you bottle it and cold-crashing is the easiest way to achieve this. Don't bother with finings with bottles, it'll make the sediment loose and you'll pour a cloudy pint from a clear bottle. But don't worry. It'll drop clear eventually and I recall that beers from Freeminer in the Forest of Dean always had great lumps of gunk and yeast at the bottom of their bottles. I wonder if they're still going.

 

[matt76]

I’ve found that while it’s not hugely difficult to reduce the amount of trub, (running the hot wort through a filter has made a difference on my most recent batch (about 1L loss instead of 2L on 11.5L) you can also take the lazy option and slightly increase your batch size. I use 9.5 L kegs, so 11.5L to the fermenter and can fill my keg plus an extra bottle on the side. Extra cost in terms of hops and grain is tiny,.

That said I am curious if you have seen an improvement in taste, or just in yield?

Agree with you about the small difference in cost (which isn't a driver for me at all anyway). Might do some calcs to see what happens if I increase my grain bill from 2.5kg to a bit more than 3kg, i.e. use a 3kg bag of base malt plus whatever else.

To answer your question, I'm not certain it's improved the taste so I would say just the yield - but I do like being able to just pour a bottle and not have to be so paranoid about getting gunk in my glass or having to leave 50ml beer in the bottle! So in that sense I'd say it's worthwhile.

 

[Rob11TC]

Haven't got the option to cold crash so going to filter when transferring to the bottling bucket.
Can't wait now till it's ready to try!!