Newbie questions

Just got a honey brown beer kit. Hops are in a sealed bag. Do i need to put them in a fridge?

Why does this instruction page say when your pouring it into a glass from the bottle to pour all but the last quarter inch into the glass?

Question 1) Store them in the freezer if you can.
Question 2) Bottle conditioned beer has yeast sediment in the bottom. If you pour the entirety of the beer, you'll pour that sediment in. It won't HURT anything, but it'll make the beer cloudy, sometimes you can taste it, and sometimes it can give you some pretty nasty farts.

Qhrumphf said:

Question 1) Store them in the freezer if you can.
Question 2) Bottle conditioned beer has yeast sediment in the bottom. If you pour the entirety of the beer, you'll pour that sediment in. It won't HURT anything, but it'll make the beer cloudy, sometimes you can taste it, and sometimes it can give you some pretty nasty farts.

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What he said ^^^

It will still have settlement after a secondary?

Yes and nuclear farts if ya pour the last bit in

swampcreek said:

It will still have settlement after a secondary?

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Yes. You cannot remove all yeast unless you filter it with a 1 micron or smaller filter. If bottling the beer you need yeast to carbonate.

The wife should love that

Yes. It is inherent in the bottle conditioning of beer. The residual yeast needed to ferment priming sugar and carbonate the beer will eventually settle to the bottom leaving sediment. If you want to ensure zero sediment in your bottles, it would required kegging, force carbonation, and then bottling back off of the keg, and even then filtration would probably be required to remove ALL sediment.

Secondary might help reduce it a little bit, but no more than some extra time in the primary fermenter, plus extra care when transferring to the bottling bucket making sure you don't kick up sediment.

You can't avoid it with bottle conditioned beer.

Yes if you use priming sugar to bottle carb. The yeast will wake up, reproduce a bit, eat sugar and fart co2. They will then settle to the bottom when you put them in the fridge

Some times I swirl the last inch and pour in the glass, sometimes I don't. No big deal. It will change the look, may change the flavor and can cause horrendous gas. Ha!

How much money am i looking at to keg it?

Bare minimum, you'd need a corny keg, CO2 cylinder, and appropriate tubing, disconnects, and a picnic tap. Plus a fridge to carbonate in (a lot easier to carbonate cold than warm) and serve from. An additional $200 at least, probably more. If you want to filter to remove sediment (just kegging alone won't get rid of it 100%, there's still yeast in suspension), then it'll be more than that.

Kegging would be an awesome investment if you have the space and money (which not all of us do). If not, you get very adept very quickly at pouring right up to the sediment line. And even if you want to pour all the yeast in, farts aside, it's actually very good for you. Lots of vitamins and such.

swampcreek said:

How much money am i looking at to keg it?

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I got into kegging for just under $400. I do recommend learning how to bottle before kegging. It's not necessary, just a personal preference of mine.

Looking into that myself right now and seems to be 2 bills minimum unless ya piece meal off Craig's list but 2 to 3 hundred plus the fridge is what I am finding.

I sure hope someone corrects me and proves me wrong

I had the chance to get a truckload of free pepsi kegs once. Yeah i got plenty of space, but not money.
Can i bottle beer in wine glasses and cork it? I make wine and mead already. Just wondering

You can bottle in champange bottles and cork it, but as far as I'm aware, regular wine bottles are not pressure rated and could explode under the pressure of carbonation, ie very bad plan.

Wine glasses no I don't think so


Bottles I defer to those more knowledgeable but usually I see those wire cages on beer so assume there is a reason

Ive got some friends in restaurant equipment repairs. Never thought about it before but im gonna keep an eye out for a small kegerator fridge w taps. Thanks for all the quick replies. I will prolly be asking more questions later on. Just got this kit and will try to start on it tomorrow.

Georgia florida line here. Cheers

Ive got hop pellets in this kit. Do i need to pit them in a bag when i add them? How hard are thise little little things out

Mind you, the reaction to drinking the sediment varies from person to person. Not everyone gets massive flatulence (I never have, at least), but many do. Some get the runs, too, while a few get a mild allergy-like reaction to it as well (like minor flushing and itching, nothing very serious), though those who get that will usually have it drinking homebrew even if they don't down the sediment, from the suspended yeast in the beer proper.

OTOH, yeast sediment is rich in B-Complex vitamins, especially B-12, which is a nice balancing act - as I understand it, when the liver converts alcohol to sugar, it uses up B-12, so drinking the sediment actually helps stave off hangovers a bit (for some people, anyway, just as long as you also drink plenty of water). Since I don't get the nuclear farts problem, I usually will pour a bottle into a glass clear, then drink the dregs from the bottle. The taste of the yeast isn't exactly thrilling, but it's better than dumping it IMHO.

Unless you have the money and space for kegging, bottling isn't so bad, and it doesn't take much practice to get it to where you can consistently decant the clear beer off without disturbing the sediment. As a first time brewer, bottling is actually simpler, though almost every homebrewer eventually gets tired of cleaning and filling bottles and will want to find a way to squeeze kegs into their system - and conversely, even keggers will usually want to bottle a portion of the brews from out of the keg, so they can take them to competitions and so forth. Both bottles and kegs have their place.

I live on the florida georgia line where it is 100 degrees and 100 percent humidity most of the year. I dont run my ac when i am at work. Where is a good place to store the beer? Any one else around here go through this?

You are going to need some kind of temperature control first and foremost . If you ferment the kit you described at that temperature you will not be happy with the finished product.
Look into a swamp cooler or fermentation chamber . There are many threads on here that can describe the above better than I can but you need to control the temp better than ambient in that climate

i think i can come up with something by the next brew, i hope this one comes out good. if it turns out to be crap i might not brew beer again
wine is much easier
theres alot to brewing beer, alot of money involved

You have spent the money so far, it would be a total waste of that money to not find some way to either buy or creatively engineer a cooling system for the fermenter. As was said before, and granted I too am a newby but I have read and been told enough to know that you do NOT want your beer fermenting at that temp.

Im using my wine stuff. Ive been making it for years now. This is my first attempt at beer. An it seems like alot to go through. If it turns out really good then ill build it all

Spend 30 bucks and make a swamp cooler before you write beer off

It's a much quicker turnaround than wine and lets you know the results of your efforts much quicker

Actually you can do cheaper than that

Basically just a tub or bucket with frozen water bottles and water in it

You may already have something your fermenter will fit in

swampcreek said:

wine is much easier
theres alot to brewing beer, alot of money involved

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Not really.

You're making a big deal out of the sediment which really is a non-issue. So you're looking at kegging equipment and that *is* an expense but a thoroughly optional one as there's nothing wrong with bottling and a little sediment. Beer bottling is cheaper than wine bottling. You may or may not be able to use a wine bottle; you'll have to research the pressure issues. That's hardly a complexity to beer making. Beer making and wine making are simply two different things and you can't interchange parts. That's hardly an indication of one or the other's expense or complication.

Now admittedly you live in a place where it is always 100 degrees. (Really? *always*? Oh, well...) That's a terrible climate for beer making. (Is that really a good climate for wine? Wouldn't you have the same issues? Or is wine forgiving and you can hide the off flavors? The off flavors are still there though aren't they? You can always make a very strong heavy beer to mask the fussel alcohol off tastes.) But that's not really beer making's fault. I might as well complain about the expense and difficulty of growing fruit trees while ignoring that I live in San Francisco. (My peach tree has *never* born an edible fruit!)

Tinhorn said:

Actually you can do cheaper than that

Basically just a tub or bucket with frozen water bottles and water in it

You may already have something your fermenter will fit in

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This works marvels. But steady 100+ ambient weather might make it impractical and/or difficult.

I guess my question would be, where do you ferment your wine? I make both beer and whine, and the basic fermenting steps are the same--a cool, dark place. So how are you properly fermenting wine? However you are doing that, you should do the same for your beer.

That being said, in my experience, the initial equipment costs of beer and wine are slightly different, especially if you want to keg beer because that is a significant investment, but once you get beyond the equipment costs, beer is much cheaper to make. If you just use kits, you can easily make 3 or more 5 gallon beer kits for the price of 1 wine kit (well at least using the all-grain brew in a bag method that I do which doesn't really take a big investment).

Now, what I find to be the biggest difference between beer and wine making is the time. A wine kit takes an insignificant amount of time in comparison to the hours you will spend just getting your beer ingredients to the point of pitching the yeast. I wouldn't really try to compare the two on a cost basis. Also, I don't know if you are using glass or plastic for fermenting, but I don't know if I would ferment my beer in something that was used for wine fermenting if you use plastic. I could be off base there, but I keep those completely separate from each other because I don't want any flavors from either type potentially changing the taste of one another--and for the cost of a plastic pail, its a cheap way to make sure.

I do my wine in a closet or under the bath sink. Comes out good. I dont use kits. I pick fresh fruits and berries off of my farm. All i have to buy is a yeast pack.