Looking for advice

[junior]

When my coopers lager has finished its fermenting I was going to be putting it into a barrel/keg for week or two then put it into bottles. With this being my first ever brew I'm worried about exploding bottles thats why doing keg first and for my own piece of mind.

What would be the best and easiest way to do this?
I got some bottles and have ordered a bottling stick, I have one small bottle of co2 but have a large pub bottle of co2 in garage that I use for my welder, could I use this?

Any help appreciated as this bit getting me a bit stressed.

 

[snail59]

If your bottling and have a little bottler have a read of this thread BATCH PRIMING/BOTTLING THREAD CLICKY

 

[Kev888]

Yep, and to add a bit of background info:

The reason people get bottle bombs is usually because they have either bottled before the primary fermentation has really reached/neared the end or if they have over-done the priming sugar (or other fermentable altenative) - either way the fermentation in the bottle can be more than required for carbonation and in some cases too much for the bottle to contain.

So assuming you measure your priming sugars correctly, the key thing is mostly ensuring that the primary fermentation has ended. You can rack to a secondary barrel whilst this happens if you prefer, but this doesn't halt the fermentation so still try to make sure it has ended properly either way. (and if you do rack to a secondary vessel make sure its well sanitised and try your best not to splash/oxidise the beer - personally i feel the risks vs benefits of racking are debatable unless you're leaving it in there for more than a couple of weeks or so).

If it has been at the right temperature and seemed to ferment well/vigorously then it'll probably be mostly done within the week and you're very unlikely to find it hasn't finished within say 10 days or so even for reasonably strong beers - but if its reasonably well covered there's no reason to rush in instantly; I usually leave mine in the fermenting bucket for a couple of weeks anyway to settle well afterwards.

But the best way to tell is to measure the gravity with a (well sanitised) hydrometer. This will tell you two things - firstly is the final gravity reasonable (i.e. it hasn't stopped prematurely, potentially to start again later) and secondly has it finished falling - the same reading a couple of days apart suggests activity has largely finished. (If you also measure the pre-fermentation gravity it'll help you to estimate how much alcohol has been produced too, but thats a different issue).

Cheers
kev

 

[junior]

If I put it into the barrel/keg how would I go about this, I read somewhere that when put into a barrel/keg you have to try and not leave any air at the top and get co2 in there somehow. Can anyone explain or give me a run down on hows this is done?

thanks in advance :

 

[Kev888]

I think it depends on what you're trying to achieve (although in all cases once fermentation is over, or nearly over, try to avoid too much splashing/oxygenating of the beer).

If you were kegging for keeps then the normal way would be to prime the barrel (add more fermentable sugar) at about the time you fill it - which causes a small extra fermentation, generating CO2 which gets trapped in the headspace pushing the lighter air above it away from the beer. You can help by venting a bit to remove the top layer of air, but don't over-do it as its because most of the pressure can't escape that the beer becomes carbonated. If you have a Co2 injection system on the keg (such as from an S30 cylinder) you could inject pre-made Co2 and vent off the lighter oxygen - to fill the head space manually/instantly rather than waiting for the priming to do so.

If you were just using the keg as an un-pressurised secondary fermenting vessel then ideally you'd rack to it before the end of the primary fermentation so the tail-end of that caused the air above the beer to be replaced with CO2. After this you would bottle, priming the bottles (or the beer to be bottled) at that stage - to do to the bottle the same thing that priming the keg does to the keg.

It is possible to do a hybrid - keg and prime as above and later decant to bottles to avoid priming in the bottle. But its tricky to retain carbonation during the transfer and if you don't purge the bottle of air with Co2 beforehand you'll not have a secondary fermentation in the bottle to help out either. I tend to take this approach (from cornies) to take bottles to parties etc but it never seems to give a true bottle-conditioned result and I'd doubt how long they'd keep.

Cheers
kev

EDIT: sorry that was a bit long winded - as mentioned below its not actually very complicated, you just want some CO2 over the beer and it can either be put there by priming or by squirting some in from a cylinder.

 

[golder247]

Don't let it stress you, this is meant to be an enjoyable process and it will be. Just make sure that it has finished fermenting, which will be about a week probably in this heat. No more bubbles or activity showing for a day or so. When you bottle stick with one teaspoon of sugar per half pint (or 500ml) and make sure your lids are on tight.

If you are bottling in plastic heck you will have to go really wrong to get bombs and glass will take a fair lick to pop em. Just follow the instrucitons for the kit you can't go far wrong.

The bottler is pretty good but I honestly find the process a lot quicker with cleaning all the bottles sterilising and putting into a crate or some such priming all in one go and just getting a syphon going. so much faster than using the bottler or the tap. I know this now after buying the bloody thing of course!!

Good luck it will be much easier than you are thinking.

 

[junior]

Cheers chaps : , I have just taken a reading and was the same as yesterday and its been in the fv a week tomorrow but it,s looking a bit cloudy should I be worried about it?

 

[broadfordbrewer]

No don't be concerned by it being cloudy. My personal preference is to bottle my beer as soon as I think the fermentation is over in the FV. I've had a couple of batches oxidise after leaving them to clear for a bit too long in the FV. Your bottled/kegged beer will clear just fine while it is conditioning :thumb: