Bottling straight from primary fermenter

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goswell

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I am going to give brewing a try and for my first run I'm going to use a method I saw on Youtube by a guy named craigtube. He basically boils the wort and then ferments in a 6.5 gallon pail. After it is finished fermenting he primes each bottle with some corn sugar and then racks the bottles right from the fermentor.

My question is since I will be bottling from the primary fermentor I will need to keep the spigot above the sediment level. So, how much sediment should I expect from a 5 gallon batch? I'm going to manually drill the hole for the spigot and I want to make sure I allow enough room for the sediment.
 
For just a few dollars more, you can have a much better experience. A 5 gallon bucket is only like $3 at Home Depot and they nest, so storage is not an issue. A racking cane and some tubing costs less than a spigot and it's easy to manually control your siphon by keeping the tip off the sediment.
It will be impossible to predict the exact amount of sediment as it depends on many things from batch to batch. If you insist on priming bottle by bottle, you can get these, which will be much more controlled. I keg primarily, but use these to create a few bottle conditioned sample of most batches. Trying to get the amount of corn sugar correct in each bottle will be variable at best, and very possibly explosive.
 
There are easier ways to bottle that give more consistent results than the method you describe.

In case you haven't seen it yet, here is a reputable source for instructions on bottling beer (and brewing beer in general).
 
I agree with the others. Craigtube is going about things the hard way and either leaving too much beer in the fermenter or getting too much sediment into the bottle. I've bottled straight out of a secondary before, but I wouldn't think of bottling straight out of a primary. Get a bottling bucket and be much happier.


TL
 
OMG, I just figured out who Craigtube is! What a laugh!
To the original poster, please spend some time around here and on how to brew. You will have a much better chance of having a positive first experience.
 
Good night! I just searched for "craigtube" on YouTube, myself. It's that guy! Yeah, he may not be giving the best advice!


TL
 
yeah sucks to that guy(craigtube), all the good info is right here on this site in the form of other people's experiences. Your first experience is all-important as others have mentioned, and can be properly done with minimal equipment and space usage. At the least buy one more bucket, to transfer the beer into for bottling. You can still use your siphon to bottle, just without the risk of too much sediment. Welcome and remember, brewing is the lesiurely pursuit of KINGS.
 
I agree with all the above, if you want to take a chance on A: Wasting your time and money, or, B: Redecorating whereever you lpan on storing these bottle bombs, feel free. But if you're at all serious about brewing, I would scan through these forums and even go get yourself some real equipment. You don't have to spend hundreds, but I think most of us can attest that when we try to go the cheap route, we end up getting burned. For me, see recycling 12-ounce bottles vs buying the 22's, the great mini keg disaster...the list goes on and on.
 
These are old posts. Craig has really picked up the fan base on YouTube.

Just because a guy has fans does not automatically mean that he's right. Obama and Bush both had an awful lot of fans.
 
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