Clibit Brewday

[clibit]

I did it once before, a long time ago, and I'm sure it worked fine. My beer is not flat, it's just not as carbed as I'd like, but I'll be patient because experience tells me carbonation can increase over quite a long period of time.

 

[MyQul]

I tried that once clibit, adding sugar to an under carbonated bottle. As soon as the sugar touched the beer it went off like a rocket and foamed out of the bottle. I ended up mopping up most of it, wish I drank it flat.

All the sugar granueles create little nucleation points, similiar to a nucleated pint glass

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pint_glass#Nucleated_pint_glasses

 

[clibit]

Time, the great brew healer. Opened another brown ale, 26 days in the bottle, and now nicely carbed. 1cm of foam. And this beer is superb, I love it. Minch lager malt, Crystal 40L, Crystal Rye, Wheat malt, Pale Chocolate, Brown sugar and a touch of Carafa III. With Cluster hops for 42 IBUs. This brown/amber/red kind of beer with strong hops is right up my street.

 

[clibit]

Well, the English hop version is now carbing up nicely and is completely transformed, it's fabulous - this batch I split into 4 brews is turning out to be great. 4 weeks in the bottle now, and the brown ale, English hop and Amarillo versions have all come good. I bottled the Citra batch a week later and haven't tasted it yet but it was the one that tasted good at bottling time so high hopes. Some of my beers are ready to go a week or two after bottling, some obviously need a month or so.

 

[clibit]

A rare Clibit photo, this is the Cluster Brown ale I drank yesterday:

 

[lagerlad]

looks totally tremendous clibit,had a taste of my first gallon batch of ag and it was great not as good a head as yours tho but i may have opened a bit early gonna get some more on the go soon,10 litres next time as i got a big pot,cant wait cheers lagerlad

 

[clibit]

Good man. It's taken 4 weeks for my head to properly appear on this one. I primed it quite lightly and i crash cooled it before bottling, so i think the yeast took a while to get going. Give yours time.

 

[MyQul]

Good man. It's taken 4 weeks for my head to properly appear on this one. I primed it quite lightly and i crash cooled it before bottling, so i think the yeast took a while to get going. Give yours time.

What rate did you prime it at?

 

[clibit]

I put 17g brewing sugar in each brew, each about 4.5 liters. Which is less than 2g per 500ml bottle, about 1.9g per litre. But it's getting there, not far off being carbed nicely.

 

[MyQul]

Wow, 1.9g/L is super low. Surprised at the head you got on your beer in the piccy. Any reason you primed so low?

 

[clibit]

Sorry meant 1.9g per bottle, 3.8g per litre. Equivalent to 85g in 5 gallons. Which is a normally amount for English ales using white table sugar, but you need a bit more brewing sugar for the same effect.

 

[MyQul]

Still quite low though. Not your normal priming rate I take it. I prime everything at 5g/L myself

 

[clibit]

I bottled the beer after cold crashing so I dropped it a bit. 5g a litre is about right for me.

 

[clibit]

I took drastic, experimental action last Friday when I decided these beers were not improvingand lacked bitterness and hop flavour, as well as carbonation being a bit low,still.

I decided to risk oxidation by emptying the bottles (as carefully as possible) into a bottling bucket, and adding a hop tea and priming sugar.

I ended up blending the Amarillo and Citra batches, and adding a hop tea made by boiling 10g of Centennial and 10g of Simcoe for 30 mins.

I blended the Cluster brown ale with the English hopped batch, and added a hop tea, 10g each of Challenger and Cascade boiled for 30 mins.

I've just had a bottle of the Amarillo Citra Centennial Simcoe which is about 4.5% I think, and wham, it's fantastic! Well carbed already, and fantastic hop flavour. Solid bitternrss, and foam all the way down the glass. I'm really chuffed. You can sometimes fix a beer that didn't go quite to plan.

 

[HebridesRob]

I took drastic, experimental action last Friday when I decided these beers were not improvingand lacked bitterness and hop flavour, as well as carbonation being a bit low,still.

I decided to risk oxidation by emptying the bottles into a bottling bucket, and adding a hop tea and priming sugar.

I ended up blending the Amarillo and Citra batches, and adding a hop tea made by boiling 10g of Centennial and 10g of Simcoe for 30 mins.

I blended the Cluster brown ale with the English hopped batch, and added a hop tea, 10g each of Challenger and Cascade boiled for 30 mins.

I've just had a bottle of the Amarillo Citra Centennial Simcoe which is about 4.5% I think, and wham, it's fantastic! Well carbed already, and fantastic hop flavour. Solid bitternrss, and foam all the way down the glass. I'm really chuffed. You can sometimes fix a beer that didn't go quite to plan.

Good, glad it worked for you. Worth the risk if you didn't like what you had.
I wish I'd done similar with a batch I put into 2.5L PET bottles and emptied them into my barrel & re-primed. Not an experiment I'll repeat. Impossible to keep clear after pouring the first glass and the floppiness of the bottles is a pain.
I like the idea of a continuous thread for brew days, by the way. I'm going to copy.

 

[clibit]

Cheers Rob. I've just finished a bottle of the other one, which now has six hops! First Gold, EKG, Northdown, Cluster, Challenger abd Cascade. It's every bit as good as the other. The hop tea has made a colossal difference. And I wasn't sure about just boiling hops in water, but it's worked. Intense hop flavour and bitterness. No water treatment, but apparently not required! Two lowish ABV IPAs that are up there with my best efforts.

 

[cheshirehomebrew]

Have topped up with hop tea in one or two of my brews, and it does make a difference, glad it worked out for you

 

[clibit]

I've used hop teas at bottling time before, but never opened up previously made bottles and added a hop tea. It worked better than I expected, total transformation. Bit of a faff, but it made 30 bottles of average beer into 30 bottles of really great beer. Chuffed!

 

[kevinm]

Is beer yeast as forgiving as distillers yeast?
i could transfer a cpl mugfuls of lees from barrel to barrel to get a new batch of "beer" going for sour mash.
I bought 2 Lbs of distillers yeast online and only ever used 5 Tablespoons in 3 years

 

[Tony1951]

It is surprising how tolerant beer is to being re-packaged. I've done it with my naturally carbonated, barrelled ales a few times when the keg has run out of co2 with about a gallon of beer left in the bottom. I have just opened the lid a bit and put clean, sugar dosed bottles under the tap, filled them up and put them away for a couple or three weeks. The beer was fantastic after - I like the sparkle of bottled beers. I think it can enhance the flavour.