Yarrow Gruit, Round 2: A Bottling Question

Okay,

So last time I ended up with a "sour apple" gruit when we were shooting for a yarrow flavor. This time the process went very smoothly, as I built the proper equipment and followed correct procedure while maintaining super sanitation.

I have the gruit fermenting in a plastic bucket with a spigot. My question is: How much of the fermented wort should I allow to flow from the bottom of the bucket (in order to clear the sediment) before I start putting the fermented wort into the bottles and/or fermenting bucket for the second stage fermentation?

Thanks Fellow Beer/Gruit Dudes (A Gender Neutral Term)!

I don't understand the question. It shouldn't be any different from any other beer, depending on all your ingredients the trub should pack well in the bottom after about 3 weeks. If you're going to secondary, simply try to leave as much trub behind as possible.

You can rack the beer off (to bottling bucket or secondary) and just move the racking tube down as you go, then simply stop racking when it starts picking up sediment.

To your "sour apple" comment, I've found that gruit is alot more tollerable when I use half the amout of recommended herb(s), otherwise conditioning takes an exceptionally long time since most of the herbs seem to be exponentially stronger than hops.

Did I answer any of your questions?

I personally would rack with an autospiphon from the top of the bucket, rather than through the spigot.

The question is: Would it be best to rack with a siphon or with the spigot on the bottom of the bucket? I did notice that the gruit did take a long-time to condition. Although it did retain its sour apple flavor, the sour flavor weakened considerably over time. Thanks for your advice.

Right on! I was thinking the same, but then I thought how much easier bottling would be if I did not have to use a siphon.

skeyeflery said:

Right on! I was thinking the same, but then I thought how much easier bottling would be if I did not have to use a siphon.

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The problem is that you need to prime it. (unless of course you want to try and force carbonate a keg, etc) This means you need to mix sugar in the beer before you bottle, which means you should transfer it to a different bucket so as not to mix up the trub that you've worked so hard to clear out, but then I guess you could use the carb tabs, of which I have zero experience.:rockin: Brew on bruthaa!