Newbie questions

[Hazelwood Brewery]

That’s fine, keep thinking.

If you fully carbonate your beer you don’t need to add more priming sugar if you don’t want to but you will lose some carbonation when you transfer to bottles. Another fermentation is fine if you want to top-up.

When (if) you move to kegs there is a special bottling contraption called a counter-pressure bottle filler that minimises loss of carbonation but you can’t use these on your PB

 

[Haversham]

Time for an end-of-term report. I've quite often seen posts like my original one, after which the poster seems to vanish, leaving me to wonder how it all turned out. So I thought I'd update the forum for the benefit, I hope, of current and future newbies.

Like all good stories, this one started off with a goal in mind, moved into complacency, hit a crisis or two which I (mostly) overcame while learning plenty of stuff along the way, and ended up in a fairly happy place feeling a lot more prepared for the next campaign.

I started with a couple of Woodforde kits as these have been well recommended. I wouldn't call it a crisis but my first self-doubt centred round having the right equipment. I probably overcompensated and bought too much gear but no doubt it will all get used at some point. I planned to ferment the two kits one after another, but then decided to do both simultaneously, which meant doubling up on FVs and airlocks. I fretted about having enough bottles before thinking it would be good to have one brew in bottle and one in pressure barrel. So I bought a King Keg.

Next anxiety was over cleaning and sanitising. I totally get that this is a vital part of the process but I read so much about it that it made me paranoid. At the height of my preparations the kitchen resembled a cross between a meth lab and an intensive care unit. Should I use Oxy or Chemclean or Fairy Liquid and ChemSan? Erm, better try them all.

By far the biggest challenge was temperature. I kicked off fermentation during the August heatwave, and pitched the yeast at far too high a temperature -- about 26/27 degrees. When this didn't look like dropping I had to resort to wet towels and fans. I did eventually get the temp down to about 22-24 which was probably still too high. Worse was that the damage (if there was to be any) was probably already done.

After about 14 days I siphoned the FV with the Admiral's Reserve into a bottling bucket and bottled from there. I PB-ed the Wherry, making a huge mess in the process, and convinced I'd introduced too much air as I'd done so. I added about 80-85g of priming sugar to each batch to carbonate, then put them all into the garage for conditioning.

I tasted small samples after 7 weeks but it definitely had the home brew 'twang'. Left it and sampled again every week or so and both finally came good after about 14 weeks. Definitely not perfect though the bottled Admiral's Reserve showed better than the Wherry in barrel (perhaps because of the higher alcohol?) This was much longer than expected but I'm wondering if the high initial temperature handicapped it at the start and it just needed more time to even out. This is a highly unscientific thought but it's all I have! The barrelled Wherry is now just about finished (what's left is rather flat) but I have quite a few bottles of Admiral left which is in fine fettle.

Conclusion: overall, this was a success. Both the process and the result have been enjoyable. Most important is that I've learnt a few good lessons. The main one is not to underestimate the importance of fermentation temperature. In future (or until I get a fermentation fridge - which may never happen) I will probably avoid fermenting beer during the summer months. I'd say it's an October to June hobby!

Thanks again for the advice along the way. Next brew will be an IPA of some kind.

 

[Agentgonzo]

By far the biggest challenge was temperature. I kicked off fermentation during the August heatwave, and pitched the yeast at far too high a temperature -- about 26/27 degrees. When this didn't look like dropping I had to resort to wet towels and fans. I did eventually get the temp down to about 22-24 which was probably still too high.

I tend to avoid brewing in heatwaves, but if I do, then a wet towel and a fan works wonders and keeps the beer in the 20-23 range, which is about as accurate as a fermentation fridge can do anyway (fermentation is exothermic and so the fermentating beer will naturally be warmer than the fridge setting during active fermention).

 

[An Ankoù]

That's an excellent report, @Haversham , it's clear from what you say that you've learnt a lot from your first ventures and have drawn the right conclusions. One thing to consider about temperature control is instead of controlling the temperature, go with nature and ferment hot with saison or kveik yeasts or cold with lager yeasts in the winter. Get a variety of yeasts cheaply from CML and make a note of the ideal temperature ranges. You should be able to cover all eventualities.