I just got into homebrewing and my first beer, a simple all grain APA, went into bottles last night. I don't have enough bottles to have two 5 gallon batches carbing at once, so I thought I would try doing a simple apple juice concoction in between batches.
I went ahead and put 5 gallons of Langers apple juice into my primary as soon as it was available last night, added two pounds of boiled dextrose and then pitched a packet of S-04. My plan is to save the plastic bottles the juice came in so that I have somewhere to put this when it is done.
Originally I had decided to just fill the bottles and then crash them in the fridge, but now I am leaning towards trying to carb half of them. I figure if I rack into the bottles when I get to about 1.02 SG I should be able to put half of those in the fridge as a fairly sweet finished product and keep the other half at 70 degrees to carb without adding any more sugar.
The bottles that this juice came in are likely not designed to hold a pressurized product. Is there any chance that I will be able to carb these without causing any explosions? The bottles have a soft gasket like the ones you see on soda bottles. I'm thinking I should be able to judge how carbed the bottles are by squeezing them, so I should be able to move them to the fridge when they feel full. Does anyone have any experience carbing in plastic juice bottles like this? Any thoughts would be appreciated.
I went ahead and put 5 gallons of Langers apple juice into my primary as soon as it was available last night, added two pounds of boiled dextrose and then pitched a packet of S-04. My plan is to save the plastic bottles the juice came in so that I have somewhere to put this when it is done.
Originally I had decided to just fill the bottles and then crash them in the fridge, but now I am leaning towards trying to carb half of them. I figure if I rack into the bottles when I get to about 1.02 SG I should be able to put half of those in the fridge as a fairly sweet finished product and keep the other half at 70 degrees to carb without adding any more sugar.
The bottles that this juice came in are likely not designed to hold a pressurized product. Is there any chance that I will be able to carb these without causing any explosions? The bottles have a soft gasket like the ones you see on soda bottles. I'm thinking I should be able to judge how carbed the bottles are by squeezing them, so I should be able to move them to the fridge when they feel full. Does anyone have any experience carbing in plastic juice bottles like this? Any thoughts would be appreciated.