Bottles and taste

I'm a bit new to this, so some of you may look at me like an idiot, and I'm alright with that - That's my preface for this:

A buddy and I just brewed our first batch ever, and followed the instructions to a T (With the exception of improvised cooling because of a lack of wort chiller, and my buddy adding corn sugar with the malt, thus us improvising with regular sugar prior to bottling.) The kit we got was from Midwest, single fermenter, and no bottles.

Said buddy works at a liquor store in town and suggested we just drink some beers and save the bottles. We did, sterilized them, etc, and started the bottling process. The bottles were various shapes and sizes and at time of bottling we labeled the caps in the order we filled.

My question is, at time of drinking we began to notice that the lower numbers tasted better than the higher. (I could be wrong) but I would imagine this is due to the stuff in the bottom (setimet?) getting stronger, even though we siphoned it into the bottling bucket. That said, is there a way to get a consistent flavor throughout the entire batch? Should I be filtering the beer? If so, when?

Thanks in advance, and sorry for the long story and probably novice questions

Did you stir the beer as you bottled?

When my Brew Buddies and I bottle, one person is stirring the beer in the bottling bucket while the other is filling bottles.

No, we haven't tried that yet. We have a batch coming out of the fermenter on Tuesday that we can do that with. My buddy also suggested filtering the beer prior to bottling, and ideas on that?

If you filter before bottling you will not have enough yeast in suspension to carbonate your beer. That won't be an issue if you were kegging, but if you plan on bottling I would strongly advise against filtering.

Midwest provides a free CD on how to brew and bottle. Did you get one with your order? You can also go to their website and watch them.

and it sounds like you didn't follow to a t if you're dumping your priming sugar in the wort

Next batch read through the instructions prior to brewing. Hang on to the instructions as well for bottling. When you make your priming sugars batch to dump in your bottling bucket do it a little at a time. Next stir the beer gently to mix the primer. Then you should be ok.

lgilmore said:

Midwest provides a free CD on how to brew and bottle. Did you get one with your order? You can also go to their website and watch them.

and it sounds like you didn't follow to a t if you're dumping your priming sugar in the wort

Next batch read through the instructions prior to brewing. Hang on to the instructions as well for bottling. When you make your priming sugars batch to dump in your bottling bucket do it a little at a time. Next stir the beer gently to mix the primer. Then you should be ok.

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We did get the cd, and only on the first batch did we improvise. The second and third also have a fair amount of sediment on the bottom. As far as the sugar, they say to get 1 cup warm water, stir the priming sugar until disolved, then dump it in the bottling bucket (after syfoning the wort in) - is just pouring it and stirring better?

Did you drink them in a certain order based on the numbers? i.e. starting with bottle #45 instead of #1? It could be the homebrewer's pain of the last bottle drank being the best

No, we just grab whatever we grab.

I thought you would say that. I would go with the others and say to stir really well. I don't know if it makes a difference, but I put the sugar water in the bottling bucket before siphoning the beer. If you stir well, it shouldn't matter, but it could be that you're not getting enough priming sugar to the bottom of the bucket for the first few bottles.

Would that make a difference in the carbonation if the last few? They seem to be carbonated and such.

It's like i said, we're going to try stiring really well this round (tues)

My first few batches had carbonation problems with the first few. It got better when I put the sugar in first. I probably was just lazy and didn't stir well enough. Good luck on your bottling this batch.

"We did get the cd, and only on the first batch did we improvise. The second and third also have a fair amount of sediment on the bottom. As far as the sugar, they say to get 1 cup warm water, stir the priming sugar until disolved, then dump it in the bottling bucket (after syfoning the wort in) - is just pouring it and stirring better?"

There is an excellent and mean excellent sticky on this forum on bottling. It is very much worth your time to go through it. I learned a ton without going through the trial and errors that new brewers do. I have my bottliing down to about 40 minutes or less start of bottling to finished and cleaned up for 5 gallons. Some great ideas in that post.

If you're getting a bunch of junk in your bottles, try cold crashing for a couple days or use a secondary to move the beer and let it clear some more. Consider Irish moss in your boil and when you siphon into the bottling bucket make sure you adjust your racking cane to get what you can without pulling up yeast. Each of these topics are in greater detail on this forum. All of them will make your beer clearer.

Last tip for this batch coming up.. cold crash it before you fill the bottling bucket. As you add the beer gently pour in a quarter of the priming solution every gallon or so, then stir it gently. Good luck.