letting the fizz out of the bottles

[lazylizard]

hi guys

sorry for newbie question and also if its int he wrong place

brewing for the first time ever and the instructions with the kit are awful and very vague...

I just wondered when bottling and the instructions say shake after adding sugar etc do I then need to open it up again to let any gas out then retighten? or just shake and leave



thanks



kind regards

 

[London]

No need to shake just add sugar and tighten the cap and leave for about 2 weeks at room temp.

 

[DavidDetroit]

The idea behind adding sugar is to create gas (carbon dioxide) which will eventually carbonate your beer.

 

[MmmmCitra]

Don't shake, that will only cause oxygenation which is BAD..........

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

My stout will be at the same stage this weekend. The instruction say add 1/2 spoon full in each bottle, would it be sensible to add it in bulk to the FV, before transferring to the bottles?

It then says two days in the warm, then 14 days somewhere cooler.

I read somewhere else - to leave the caps loose so they do not seal for an hour, to expel the oxygen, then tighten. Is that correct please?

 

[Davvy]

With Bottling, after your kit is finished fermenting and you think that your beer is ready to bottle (no gas being produced and / or a couple of hydrometer readings which are similar......i.e. 1.010, or below for something like a pale ale, etc..your kit may tell you what to expect ?).
Then add your normal white table/granulated sugar to your bottles and fill.
If the kit says a teaspoon or half a teaspoon go with that.
As for shaking - when I did kits, I did do, but had no clue as to whether oxidation or not was an issue....but you have to disperse the sugar so that the small amount of live yeast in your beer can utilise to produce carbon dioxide gas.

Close the lids at that point ! leaving the lids open would not help an any way in my opinion , so seal.

Mimimum a week at fermentaton temperatures to allow the gas to be produced, and no you do not release any gas or let the lids loose before you wish to drink ...which will be a couple of weeks later at shed temperatures.

Helpful other steps are : batch priming with table sugar in an other clean bucket, there aer good calculators on the internet to allow you to know how much sugar to add versus the amount of beer you have to bottle ; so you do not have to muck around with a "Teaspoon" which is not an exact measurement.
Having a hydrometer is essential so that you know when your beer is finished - get one off Fleabay if you do not have one already.

Hope this helps somewhat,

All the best.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

Helpful other steps are : batch priming with table sugar in an other clean bucket, there aer good calculators on the internet to allow you to know how much sugar to add versus the amount of beer you have to bottle ; so you do not have to muck around with a "Teaspoon" which is not an exact measurement.
Having a hydrometer is essential so that you know when your beer is finished - get one off Fleabay if you do not have one already.

It was the potential inaccuracy of trying to measure 1/2 a teaspoon (2mg) which was troubling me, much easier to weigh for the the bulk addition. It mentions 85g for a 40 pint keg, which is equivalent to the 2mg per pint. So just to be clear, you are say I can add 85g to the bulk, then bottle?

I have a couple of hydrometers and now a reflectometer too, plus good very accurate scales. It suggest the fermentation is completed at 1018 - a couple days ago it was almost there, when I checked it. I could even weight the 2g with complete accuracy, but its a lot of messing about, if it can be done in the bulk..

 

[Bobtheblob]

I saw a video where they squeezed the pet bottles slightly so the liquid came up to the brim of the bottle and then capped. The theory being that there's less oxygen in the bottle to oxidise the beer. I don't know if there's any truth in that though.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

I saw a video where they squeezed the pet bottles slightly so the liquid came up to the brim of the bottle and then capped. The theory being that there's less oxygen in the bottle to oxidise the beer. I don't know if there's any truth in that though.

Yes, I saw that and I am using pet bottles so doing it that way would make sense. Thanks for the reminder....

 

[Davvy]

Hi Harry,
if your kit says 85 grammes for 40 pints , the instructions pretty much are assuming that you will get roughly 40 pints (easier to say in litres 22.7 l) which for my calculations for a beer around 20 degrees celcius would give you the right amount of gas for something like an English bitter.
My best advice is go onto the "Brewers friend" part of this website and go to the beer priming calculator, where you need to know the amount of beer you want to bottle in litres, the temperature it is at right now and how much gas you wish to be in the finished beer bottle.....Batch priming is the way forward !!!

On another note - make sure you siphon off the beer from the primary fermenting vessel to a second (clean) vessel - so you are not mixing the sugar in with dead yeast cells, etc...

Your kit may start off as 40 pints - but with yeast in the bottom, etc - you will not have 40 pints at the end...hence the priming calculator is invaluable.

 

[GhostShip]

As others have said, do not shake!

I always tighten the caps immediately at bottling stage and I’ve never had a problem.

With my latest brew (St Peter’s Cream Stout), I squeezed the PET bottles to bring the beer to the top and then put the cap on and tightened. It left the bottles misshapen, but I was amazed at how quickly they regained their shape, which also told me that they were carbonating up. It is a major advantage of using PET bottles IMO.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

My best advice is go onto the "Brewers friend" part of this website and go to the beer priming calculator, where you need to know the amount of beer you want to bottle in litres, the temperature it is at right now and how much gas you wish to be in the finished beer bottle.....Batch priming is the way forward !!!

The calculator agrees with 85g for 19L for stout, so I will go with that and the pet bottle squeeze method. Which means I will have to get my wine out of the second FV and in the bottle tomorrow, then tackle racking the stout in that one, to add the sugar...

Thanks all, that's a plan.

 

[Zephyr259]

As a final bit of advice, I boil the priming sugar in a couple hundred mls of water for 5 mins then add that the bottling bucket before siphoning so that it mixes easier and to ensure it's all santised/sterile.

 

[lazylizard]

thanks for all the advice guys... i wont shake

odd the instructions say shake and videos on utube say to shake too... are they are aware they are in the wrong?

davvy said 'On another note - make sure you siphon off the beer from the primary fermenting vessel to a second (clean) vessel - so you are not mixing the sugar in with dead yeast cells, etc...'

thats the first ive read/heard this.. but logically it makes sense.. will this make a difference to the end product? as in taste? or other reasons?

thanks again guys for all youre help

cjb

 

[Benfleet Brewery]

I saw a video where they squeezed the pet bottles slightly so the liquid came up to the brim of the bottle and then capped. The theory being that there's less oxygen in the bottle to oxidise the beer. I don't know if there's any truth in that though.

I've done this with my last two brews in order to get the oxygen out of the bottles but I've found that the beer seems to stay very flat. It may be that the CO2 produced just takes up the head space and isn't absorbed into the beer as well. I won't be doing that anymore but can see the point of leaving the caps loose for a few hours after bottling.

 

[Zephyr259]

I've done this with my last two brews in order to get the oxygen out of the bottles but I've found that the beer seems to stay very flat. It may be that the CO2 produced just takes up the head space and isn't absorbed into the beer as well. I won't be doing that anymore but can see the point of leaving the caps loose for a few hours after bottling.

I find that hard to believe, the air space in a bottle is pretty small and if you carbonate to 2 volumes of CO2 then there is 1 lire of CO2 in a standard 500 ml bottle. Maybe you got unlucky something else affected you carbonation?

 

[lazylizard]

hey, the placing it 'somewhere cold' after priming the bottles and sitting for a week is kind of vague... the instructions are really very poor with this kit...

my question is i was thinking of placing the bottles in the shed for 'somewhere cold'..i live in northern england and the shed though dosnt get to freezing temps inside it gets very close.. perhaps 1 or 3 above freezing at most... is this too cold?

I took a sample today for the refractometer and it came back at 1.051 and took a picture...i hope its meant to look like this.. this is after one day .. so a good sign i hope!

:)

 

[GhostShip]

hey, the placing it 'somewhere cold' after priming the bottles and sitting for a week is kind of vague... the instructions are really very poor with this kit...

my question is i was thinking of placing the bottles in the shed for 'somewhere cold'..i live in northern england and the shed though dosnt get to freezing temps inside it gets very close.. perhaps 1 or 3 above freezing at most... is this too cold?

I took a sample today for the refractometer and it came back at 1.051 and took a picture...i hope its meant to look like this.. this is after one day .. so a good sign i hope!

:)

Your shed at those temperatures will be perfect. I'd leave it for at least 2 weeks though rather than one.

Picture looks absolutely fine!

 

[Davvy]

Hi Lazylizard,
the note on removing the beer from the yeast cells (trub) in the bottom of your primary fermenter is as you say fairly logical (if there is such a thing in beer making !!) simply by removing the relatively clear beer into another clean vessel allows you then to bottle something that does not need to then settle back down in your bottle , and instead of the finished product having 5 mm of "Trub" / dead yeast cells, it may have double or more.
The more dead yeast the more likelyhood when you open they will jump up and make your pint cloudy.
Other throw away comments from other sources have said that leaving your brew sitting on this dead cells for too long may give off flavours (unproven ??) but who knows. (??).

Also,
With your sugar addition , it may dissapear into the trub, and if you do not take all of this with you, you may find you have an under pressured bottle.

For me after fermentation has ceased, I bottle, and at fermentation temperatures leave for 2 weeks, then another 2 wks in shed temps.
The 2 weeks at fermentation temperatures is to give your small amount of live yeast cell sin your beer to produce the amount of gas you need to carbonate. If you do not leave for the correct length of time - no fiz !

As for your pictures - looks spot on.
Your shed temp. will be the same as mine - so no worries there....(once the beer has been carbonated).

 

[lazylizard]

ok thanks ghostship, davvy...

its a cheap geordie scottish export kit, i didnt want to spend to much on something i hadnt done before so its a tester...hence why the instructions are so vague i guess in the kit...i have read online very good things about the geordie kits to be honest so i hope mine turns out the same..

thanks for the tips davvy, i will do the same after first stage consider transfering to another tub then to the bottles... then sugaring of course...
i assume the 2 weeks in the bottles is at the same temp as the first stage fermentation.. i will keep them in plastic boxs so if the bottles explode i dont have geordie export all over my room lol then to the fridge like shed lol

once again thanks guys for all youre help :)