jimmayhugh

Recipes 

I'm playing with my new 21.5 qt pressure cooker, and have already prepared 5L of sterilized starter wort for my next yeast starter. Right now I'm sterilizing a gallon of water for washing yeast (4 quart bottles) from a Hefe I have in a primary, and was wondering if there was any reason that I couldn't also prepare several pint jars of priming solution, since I'll be ready to bottle an APA and an American Lemon Wheat this weekend.

I figure that if I prepare, say a gallon of water and dextrose, and then sterilize it in pint jars, then I'd simply pour the pre-prepared and cooled priming solution into the beer, stir and bottle.

Any thoughts?

logan3825

Recipes 

Seems easier to just do it as you need it than go through all that trouble sanitizing pint jars. It isn't like you really need to worry about cooling your priming solution.

Tall_Yotie

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I would disagree with logan; I would prefer to make the solution early so on bottling-day I have everything made up and cooled, and don;t have to worry about waiting for the solution to cool down.

Just makes sure everything is dissolved really well before you store the priming solution.

jimmayhugh

Recipes 

I prefer to have everything ready to go before I start a session, so my thoughts were to pre-make and sterilize as much as possible in one setting. To that end, I now have:

2 gallons of sterile water in quart jars for yeast washing
2 gallons of sterile starter wort in quart jars
2 gallons of sterile priming solution in pint jars

and did all of this while I was racking a Hefeweizen to a secondary Better Bottle, washing and storing the yeast from said Hefe, and getting bottles cleaned for my APA bottling tomorrow.

I also had time to do some more research on using the pressure cooker to steam heat the 10 gallon Rubbermaid cooler I'm converting into a MLT.

The other advantage is that once the water in the pressure cooker is up to temp, it takes very little effort to transfer jars in and out and restart the sterilizing process.

Works for me.

Brewenstein

Recipes 

The reason that I would not do this (besides not having the equipment) is because my volumes of beer change slightly (5.5 to 6 gallons) and because each style of beer has a different range of recommended carbonation, and I like to carb to style. Therefore, I still would need to prep the priming solution each time. BTW, I just dump it in hot into the bottling bucket and rack away. It gets cooled quick enough that way, and there is more than enough yeast to make up for the few that get cooked at the beginning of racking.

jimmayhugh

Recipes 

Yeah, I've been using carbonation drops in all of my purchased extract / partial grain kits, so I'm not quite up to that level of sophistication yet.

Plus, based on that chart that I'm looking at in How To Brew, it seems to me that if I know the amount of sugar in a given amount of liquid, I can still carb to style by simply adding more of the priming solution.

wildwest450

Recipes 

It seems like it's a little late for the question.

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logan3825

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You don't need to let it cool down though. You are talking about mixing 1 cup with 5 gallons. It will have almost no impact on the fermented beer. Start the water boiling way at the start and set it aside to cool early on. Pour it in the bottom of the bottling bucket and rack on top of it.

Do it however you like but I don't really think you need to cool it.

jaycount

Recipes 

But think of the yeasties.

This is yeastie beastie cruelty Sending them to a hot, painful death.

logan3825

Recipes 

Sacrifices must be made. There are plenty of yeast. Losing a few will not hurt.