First time bottling concerns

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PIZ

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I'm working on my first brew. It's a Muntons English Pilsner and I've fermented for 4 weeks. I didnt rack to secondary because I've scoured the forums and found that secondary isn't necessary but the kicker here is that my primary is my bottling bucket. Last week (week 3) I tested the brew with a hydrometer (the airlock had been dormant for a few days) and it read about 1.018 after temperature adjustment. The instructions I received from my local brewing shop suggested to restart fermentation with a swirl of the bucket to get the FG down to about 1.015, so I did. It's been a week and I've tested again with the hydrometer and it comes out to about 1.016 so I want to bottle.. I've got a few questions...

I'm wondering if I should cold crash to stop fermentation to keep from getting bottle bombs. Should I just wait for fermentation to stop on it's own? Should I rack to secondary or will bottling from the primary with the trub be alright (the spigot doesn't eject trub into test tube.)

I'm just really wary because I don't want exploding bottles much less in my computer room where I plan to store them.
 
i think your probably ready to bottle as is, but to play it safe give it another week and bottle. I wouldn't personally swirl the beer any more just to prevent it from getting oxidized. Cold crashing won't stop bottle bombs, if there is fermentable sugar than the yeast will end up eating it. All you do by cold crashing is decrease the number of yeast in suspension.

In regards to the bottling right out of the spigot I am not sure on that. No experience but I would personally move it to another bottling bucket if available otherwise I would personally just bottle from the primary after adding your priming sugar, just my 2 cents.
 
As I understand it, Lowes has food grade buckets; I'd suggest getting another to bottle from. You really have no way to mix the priming solution into your wort as is without mixing up the trub into it as well, and then you'll have a pretty rough beer so you really need to be able to separate it.

Otherwise you can try priming each bottle rather than the whole bucket?
 
So I don't have to wait for the airlock to die down again before bottling? I thought that if it was still fermenting that it would create too much CO2 in the bottle and explode.

Also, what if I racked to another container, cleaned the bottling bucket, and racked back to bottling bucket on top of primer? Would I have to let the beer sit for a while in the other container so the yeast can settle?

The beer is really clear of sediment when I take a sample from the spigot if that helps any...
 
Well I ended up bottling on Sunday. I had to rack the beer to my glass carboy on Saturday to clean out the bottling bucket then the next day i racked back to the bucket and had my first bottling session. Everything went pretty well. It just seemed to take some time, but I was just making sure everything was done right. I thought bottling would be tedious but I actually enjoyed it. No bombs yet either. I was probably just being overcautious.
 
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