Best way to bottle - condition first or not?

[biggtime]

Evening all! My second brew (Woodforde's Norfolk Nog) has just finished fermenting, and I'm not certain about the best way forward if I want to bottle this one rather than keep it in pressure barrel as I did with my first brew.
I've seen conflicting advice!
A number of things I've read say I should simply prime the bottles and bottle the beer straight from fermentation. Graham Wheeler's book, however, suggests that all ales fundamentally benefit from some maturation in pressure barrel first regardless - he's ambivalent about priming the pressure barrel too - before being transferred to bottle from there, without any priming in the bottle either. What do you all recommend?

I'm working my way through my first brew (a Woodforde's Wherry, which has come out rather well), and decided a week or so ago to fill a couple of bottles with it straight from the pressure barrel, capped them and put them in the fridge to see what happened. I tried one today, and I have to say that it has gone somewhat flat. I didn't make scrupulous efforts to clean the bottle and cap as this was an experiment more than anything to see how long it might last bottling it this way, but finding it flat suggests to me that bottling from the pressure barrel without priming maybe a risky business.

 

[alanywiseman.]

I bottle my beer and just prime and bottle my beer. No maturation in a pressure barrel and it works great. Aim for about 1tsp per liter of beer :thumb:

 

[Dave1970]

Bottling straight from the FV is fine, leave somewhere cold for a few days to drop as much of the yeast as you can then prime the bottles with about 1 tsp/litre.

A slightly better way is to transfer into a bottling bucket, a second FV (often fitted with the right tap for a Little Bottler), then you can batch prime. Again put your FV somewhere cool to drop the yeast then dissolve sugar for the full volume (about 80g) in a little boiling water, put the sugar syrup in the bottom of your bottling bucket then syphon the beer on top. You can bottle without the hassle of measuring out sugar for each individual bottle and if you're using a mixture of sizes of bottle without having to worry about how much sugar to put in each.

In some ways you could use a pressure barrel as a bottling bucket, including leaving the brew in there to bulk condition for a while. The downside I can see of this is that if you build up a pressure in the barrel you won't know how much CO2 has dissolved in your brew while in the barrel. This will make it difficult to know how much sugar to prime your bottles with because your beer already has some CO2 dissolved in it

 

[Baz Chaz]

....... A slightly better way is to transfer into a bottling bucket, a second FV (often fitted with the right tap for a Little Bottler), then you can batch prime. Again put your FV somewhere cool to drop the yeast then dissolve sugar for the full volume (about 80g) in a little boiling water, put the sugar syrup in the bottom of your bottling bucket then syphon the beer on top. You can bottle without the hassle of measuring out sugar for each individual bottle and if you're using a mixture of sizes of bottle without having to worry about how much sugar to put in each.

Exactly the way I bottle all my beers, but I just use less sugar, down to as little as 40g, I don't like fizzy beer :thumb:

Then leave in the warm for a week before out into storage :thumb:

 

[Andyhull]

I go straight from FV to bottle and for ales prime the bottle with 3/4 of a tsp of castar sugar per 500ml bottle, this gives me a nice bit of fiz but not so much that it masks the flavour.

I will batch prime when i eventually get round to getting another FV but until then i just use a sterilised funnel and 3/4tsp measuring spoon, it doesn't take long at all, maybe around 5 mins to prime 40 bottles.

I always get a clear pint and have never had a flat one "yet"!

There are lots of processes you can add, but sometimes you/we can over complicate what is a simple process.

Andy