how do i reduce sediment in bottles

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sgrcltpunk

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ok so i have bottled my first batch and after 4 days i see alot of sediment in the bottom of the bottles, yeast im sure, how can i leave most of this behind so i can drink all the way to the bottom of the bottle? also its a little hazy looking through the bottle (hasn't been chilled) is this suspended yeast? or bad stuff
 
Refrigerating it will compact the yeast. When you pour, do it gently and leave behind the yeast. To reduce it, a longer primary, or crash cooling are your best bets. The haze you see now is probably still yeast. 4 days in the bottle isn't a long time. Let them sit for at least 2 weeks, then refrigerate for a few days. Most or all of the haze should clear.
 
this batched finished fermenting in the primary after 4 days and then in the second it finished after 2 weeks and it is a lager of course i did it at ale temps is it a good idea to check the carbonation after 4 days with one of the more clear bottles?
 
sgrcltpunk said:
this batched finished fermenting in the primary after 4 days and then in the second it finished after 2 weeks and it is a lager of course i did it at ale temps is it a good idea to check the carbonation after 4 days with one of the more clear bottles?
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No, it's best just to leave the bottles alone for 3 weeks at 70 degrees, that's the minimum time it takes for average gravity beers to carbonate and condition. Higher grav beers take longer.

Stouts and porters have taken me between 6 and 8 weeks to carb up..I have a 1.090 Belgian strong that took three months to carb up.


Everything you need to know about carbing and conditioning, can be found here Of Patience and Bottle Conditioning. With emphasis on the word, "patience."

As to sediment in bottles, unless you keg you will have sediment, it's part of the carbonation process, for bottle conditioned beers, both homebrew, and many many commercial microbrews. Just like how you have trub in the bottom of the fermentor, you will have sediment in the bottom of the bottles.

It's not to be hated, it's proof that you have made a living beer.

In fact the Belgian's practically worship it.

If you are interested in reading more about it, you can read this post of mine from awhile back, when someone else asked the question.

Yeast in Bottle information.

There's even a video on how to pour bottle conditioned beers leaving the sediment behind.
 
ok i see now i wasnt trying to avoid all yeast but just lessen the amount because it has about a quarter inch in the bottom of each bottle and i guess ill just have to wait to touch my brew it did ferment very fast so i am wondering if maybe it will be a little sooner than 3 weeks?
 
Do NOT check after 4 days.

If it is carbonated, then you have way overprimed.

If it is flat (most likely) you have wasted 1 beer.

Wait at least until the 1 week mark.

When racking to secondary or bottling bucket, do not suck up the yeast at the bottom.
 
sgrcltpunk said:
ok i see now i wasnt trying to avoid all yeast but just lessen the amount because it has about a quarter inch in the bottom of each bottle and i guess ill just have to wait to touch my brew it did ferment very fast so i am wondering if maybe it will be a little sooner than 3 weeks?
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Did you happen to read the blog, the one with the word patience in the title?;) It all depends on the gravity of the beer. you have to remember, you're not making koolaid, you are making a living thing. And you are not in charge, the yeast are and they have their own agenda and time frame.

Personally I don't touch my first beer til 3 weeks, I know from experience that the beer won't be ready anytime before that, so it's a waste of a beer.

I know it's hard in the beginning, but the outcome is so worth it.

:mug:
 
You can drop a lot of your yeast out of suspension by chilling for 2-3 days at around 33* before bottling. This will help reduce the amount of sediment but will still leave enough yeast to carbonate. Also, letting it rest in a bright tank or fermenter for another week or two will help. Finally, I assume that you didn't get much if any sediment when you racked off of the secondary into the bottling bucket. Stirring up the trub in your fermenter and getting that into the bottling bucket is a common way to also get excessive sediment in bottle.
 
Revvy said:
Did you happen to read the blog, the one with the word patience in the title?;) It all depends on the gravity of the beer. you have to remember, you're not making koolaid, you are making a living thing. And you are not in charge, the yeast are and they have their own agenda and time frame.

Personally I don't touch my first beer til 3 weeks, I know from experience that the beer won't be ready anytime before that, so it's a waste of a beer.

I know it's hard in the beginning, but the outcome is so worth it.

:mug:
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makes since and yes i read it ill have to wait to check it .... but i want to have my beer so bad ... o well ill just sit back and drink a troegs
 
sgrcltpunk said:
makes since and yes i read it ill have to wait to check it .... but i want to have my beer so bad ... o well ill just sit back and drink a troegs
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I am not of the same school as Revvy in this regard. If you don't care that you will be drinking green beer I say go for it. You will not have very good beer for a number of weeks but drinking beer that isn't ready can be educational as long as you don't post here asking why your beer doesn't taste good. The obvious answer is that it isn't ready to drink yet.

It is good to drink unhopped runnings from your mash tun to know what it tastes like. It's always good to drink your post-boil hydrometer samples to know what unfermented wort with hops tastes like. The same for the samples to determine if you're ready for bottling. I think this goes on to post-bottling. Try a beer a week and find out how long it takes that recipe in your house to condition and how it improves over the first few months.
 
sgrcltpunk said:
makes since and yes i read it ill have to wait to check it .... but i want to have my beer so bad ... o well ill just sit back and drink a troegs
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You're not the first one who's faced this issue...nor are you the 100,000th brewer on here who does. :D

But I have found that for the most part it's only new brewers who are that way, once you get a pipeline going, it really won't be an issue.

Here's an old discussion that might give you some insight. I had found in the back of my fridge a bottle of homebrew that had been in there for 3 months.

captianoats said:
How did you manage to keep a delicious chilled beer for 3 months? I'm lucky to keep a six pack cold for 3 weeks without downing them all.
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Revvy said:
It's called having a pipeline, beers at different levels of readiness. With a pipleine and a full fridge with many choices it is easy to not have a taste for a certain beer for a while, or just not grab it from the back..this was something I wrote a few months ago, it sums up my pipeline at the time....


I leave 99% of my beers in primary for a month...then I bottle...and right now I can't get 70 degrees in my loft to save my life...so I don't expect ANY of my beers to be carbed on time....so in the interim, I buy mix sixers of various beers to try as research for the next beers I plan on brewing and to build up my bottle stock.

For Example, I brewed my Pumpkin Ale for Thanksgiving on Labor Day...figuring at 8 weeks, I MIGHT have some ready for Holloween...But they were still green, so I only brought a couple to my annuual Halloween thingy, along with a sampler of commercial pumpkins...BUT come Turkey Day the beer was fantastic, and was a hit at the holiday.

Right now this is my current inventory...

Drinking....IPA, various bottles of Oaked Smoked Brown Ale, Smoked brown ale, Poor Richard's Ale, Biermuncher's Centennial Blonde (but as a Lager,)
Avoiding....Marris Otter/Argentinian Cascade SMaSH (It sucks)
Bottle Conditioning..... Chocolate Mole Porter, Belgian Dark Strong Ale, Peach Mead
In Primary.....Schwartzbier, Vienna Lager
Bulk Aging....Mead
Lagering....Dead Guy Clone Lager

Pretty much anything still in Primary or Lagering I will not be drinking til the end of March, but more than likely April....The Mole Porter needs a minimum several more weeks as well....but the Belgian Strong is prolly going to need 3-6 months to be ready...

The Swartzbier has 3 weeks more in primary, then another month lagering, THEN 3 weeks at least in the bottles...

Some weeks I take a break from my own beers to drink a couple sixers of samplers, so I don't drink ALL my current and other ready beers before the others comes online....Plus I'm craving a couple of styles that I don't have ready (like Vienna Lager) so I will make a bottle run....I also get to try new styles to come up with new ones to brew down the line.

And I'm also probably going to brew something this weekend...don't know what yet...maybe a low abv mild that I would only leave in primary till fermentation is stopped then bottled..so hopefully in a month they will drinkable.....

But do you see...you too one day will have a pipleine....and the wait will be nothing...you will have things at various stages...

This quote from one of my friends sums it up....

dontman said:
The nice thing is to get to a point in your pipeline where you are glancing through your BeerSmith brew log and realize that you have a beer that you have not even tried yet and it has been in bottle over 6 weeks. This happened to me this weekend. The beer was farging delicious.
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You can do it, I know you can. :D
 
If you think beer is hard to be patient with, try mead or wine making. I have mead that's 10 years old still waiting to be consumed.

most mead and wine needs to age at least 3-6 months to lose their yeast bouquet and mellow out the alcohol.

constantly brewing in the beginning to get a stockpile is the solution :)
 
holy crap you guys are patient as hell lol but i guess once i get a big pile of beer ur right it will be easier well i guess i better start working on my dopplebock and after that i gotta figure out how to make an esb
 
Looks like the be patient horse has been pretty well beaten here so I will address your question about reducing sediment. I get very little sediment in my bottles. Here is what I do. One month in primary. I never move the fermenter after it is pitched. After one month I rack into the bottling bucket (again with out moving the fermenter) and I am very carful not to suck up any more trub than I can help. This is not to hard to do with lighter colored beers but a little harder withe darks beers but what I do is put a racking cain in to the beer to be racked keeping the tip of the cane (with the little black cap on it) far from the bottom of the fermenter/trub. Then I start a siphon and start lowering the cain towards the bottom of the fermenter until I see the beer in the hose cloud ever so slightly. Then I pull the cain up just a bit until I get clear beer in the hose again. I leave the cain at that level until the beer is all in the bottling bucket. Then I bottle as usual. Works great for me! Hope this helps :mug:

edit to add: Also note that I don't cold crash prior to bottling but I get the idea that it advantages to do so. I may have to give it a shot some time but so far my beers have come out pretty darn clear and with very little bottle sediment. Also note that I have never used any finings in any of my beers to date.
 
I do pretty much as Want2Brew but will explain another plus to waiting in primary for a month. After a month the yeast cake has compacted so much that it is easy to rack without getting any trub. This also nets you a couple more bottles of beer because you can rack right down to the firm yeast cake.

I've also never cold crashed a beer but usually have less sediment than many commercial bottle conditioned beers.
 
My lagers have very little. So I started cold crashing and using a secondary my ales. The same thing happened. I only have two secondaries so I can't do it will all my ales but there is a significant difference in clarity and sediment with the brews that I do use one with. If I crash out the yeast I add a little new yeast and they still carb in under a week. The three week minimum is a fable.
 
Check out the Finings section on the Brew Additives Wiki page. All of those are used to help clear your beer.

Also as stated, be careful to not siphon up a lot of trub when transferring to a bottling bucket. I usually advise most new brewers to use a secondary fermenter (also known as a britetank). Its primary purpose is to clear your beer. By using a secondary you will rack your beer off of most of the trub from the primary. What little you did transfer over to the secondary will settle out and when you transfer your beer to your bottling bucket you will move over even less of it. While your beer is settling in the secondary, you can make another brew and put it into the primary. Pipeline!
 
Want2Brew said:
Looks like the be patient horse has been pretty well beaten here so I will address your question about reducing sediment. I get very little sediment in my bottles. Here is what I do. One month in primary. I never move the fermenter after it is pitched. After one month I rack into the bottling bucket (again with out moving the fermenter) and I am very carful not to suck up any more trub than I can help. This is not to hard to do with lighter colored beers but a little harder withe darks beers but what I do is put a racking cain in to the beer to be racked keeping the tip of the cane (with the little black cap on it) far from the bottom of the fermenter/trub. Then I start a siphon and start lowering the cain towards the bottom of the fermenter until I see the beer in the hose cloud ever so slightly. Then I pull the cain up just a bit until I get clear beer in the hose again. I leave the cain at that level until the beer is all in the bottling bucket. Then I bottle as usual. Works great for me! Hope this helps :mug:

edit to add: Also note that I don't cold crash prior to bottling but I get the idea that it advantages to do so. I may have to give it a shot some time but so far my beers have come out pretty darn clear and with very little bottle sediment. Also note that I have never used any finings in any of my beers to date.
Click to expand...

What does your setup look like if you never have to move your fermenter?
 

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