First time bottling - Couple of questions

Hi all,

Ive been kegging my beer since I started home brewing, but am about take a foray into bottling with a small 2 gallon batch of black ipa. Being that this is my first time bottling I of course have a couple of newb questions. Here's the situation:

I have the beer cold crashing in my fridge to hopefully drop out all the hop matter from dry hopping with pellets. I will transfer from the primary to a bottling bucket via a racking cane.

Question number 1 - should i intentionally disturb the yeast cake a little bit to make sure i transfer some yeast for carbonating?

Question number 2 - Adding priming sugar - I'm reading that the best thing to do is boil the sugar in a small amount of water and pour into bottling bucket, i would have no problem doing this except being that this is my first time bottling I don't really know how much beer that 2 gallons will yield... so would I best best served to put a measured amount into each bottle or add the boiled water solution after racking to the bottling bucket & determining how much beer I actually have via the measuring lines on my bucket(lowes food grade paint bucket)? If I add it to the bottling bucket, whats the best way to mix it well without oxidizing?

thanks in advance.

xenophobe2020 said:

Hi all,

Ive been kegging my beer since I started home brewing, but am about take a foray into bottling with a small 2 gallon batch of black ipa. Being that this is my first time bottling I of course have a couple of newb questions. Here's the situation:

I have the beer cold crashing in my fridge to hopefully drop out all the hop matter from dry hopping with pellets. I will transfer from the primary to a bottling bucket via a racking cane.

Question number 1 - should i intentionally disturb the yeast cake a little bit to make sure i transfer some yeast for carbonating?

Question number 2 - Adding priming sugar - I'm reading that the best thing to do is boil the sugar in a small amount of water and pour into bottling bucket, i would have no problem doing this except being that this is my first time bottling I don't really know how much beer that 2 gallons will yield... so would I best best served to put a measured amount into each bottle or add the boiled water solution after racking to the bottling bucket & determining how much beer I actually have via the measuring lines on my bucket(lowes food grade paint bucket)? If I add it to the bottling bucket, whats the best way to mix it well without oxidizing?

thanks in advance.

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First of all you do not want to cold crash yet as this can kill the yeast. You might think about adding a little more yeast to the batch now before you bottle. Typically it is best to cold crash in the bottle after carbonation has been achieved.

Also do not disturb the yeast cake as there should be plenty of yeast still in solution to do the job. Disturbing the cake will mix in a bunch of unwanted sediment.

Second there are several online calculators to help you reach your target volume of co2. Typically I add .75 ounces of sugar per gallon for 2.5 volumes of co2.

Third yes you want to boil and let the sugar solution cool and then stir into your beer as you do not need to worry about oxidation as this is very unlikely at this point. Do not let the sugar caramelize at all or you will not reach proper levels of co2. Mixing it it the bucket is the easiest and most efficient way of making sure every bottle is carbonated evenly. Make sure to stir well!

Fourth sanitize absolutely everything to include the caps and bottler, counter top, cabinets around you.

Hope that helps.

1- yes you should. you will need some yeast to carbonate the bottles. the good healthy yeast will settle to the very top of the pile of stuff at the bottom. it will look like a white band (the more white this layer, the healthier the yeast. when it gets yellow or brown, that means the yeast is older) at the top of the sediment. you can try to only disturb this top layer, and leave the rest of the solids behind.

2- it depends on how big your yeast/trub cake is at the bottom. normally you leave behind about half a gallon (in a regular 5 or 6 gallon carboy), but that varies depending on the dimensions and size of the fermentor, and how big the yeast cake is.

you can dissolve 2oz of sugar into 1 cup of water (this is assuming you are shooting for a rate of 1oz sugar per gallon, adjust accordingly). add 3/4 of a cup to the bottling bucket, and rack ontop of it (= 1.75 oz of sugar). when you can figure out exactly how much finished beer you actually have, you can add however much of the remaining 1/4 cup to get the proper amount of sugar. (1 cup = 16 tablespoons; @2oz of sugar per cup of water, that means there is 1/8th of an oz. of sugar per tbsp). this way most of the sugar will be mixed by filling the bucket, and you only have to add a small amount after the fact. only this small amount is in danger of not getting thoroughly mixed; not the entire amount of sugar.

ehedge20 said:

First of all you do not want to cold crash yet as this can kill the yeast.

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umm...where do you buy yeast? answer: from the refrigerator at your LHBS.
cold crashing does not kill yeast.

ehedge20 said:

First of all you do not want to cold crash yet as this can kill the yeast. You might think about adding a little more yeast to the batch now before you bottle. Typically it is best to cold crash in the bottle after carbonation has been achieved.

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It will not kill the yeast. Plenty of people cold crash before bottling. I just did this with my last 5 batches and had no issues. I transferred to secondary with gelatin, cold crashed for 2 days, racked cold into bottling bucket on top of priming solution.

ehedge20 said:

Third yes you want to boil and let the sugar solution cool and then stir into your beer as you do not need to worry about oxidation as this is very unlikely at this point. Do not let the sugar caramelize at all or you will not reach proper levels of co2. Mixing it it the bucket is the easiest and most efficient way of making sure every bottle is carbonated evenly. Make sure to stir well!

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Actually, you have to be very careful about oxidation at this point. You want the priming sugar to be mixed, but you don't want to stir so hard that you aerate the beer.

Most people will get the siphon going, dump the priming solution in, and then rack on top. The racking of the beer on top will mix the solution pretty evenly. If you want to be extra cautious, you can gently stir with a sanitized long spoon or something.

ehedge20 said:

First of all you do not want to cold crash yet as this can kill the yeast. You might think about adding a little more yeast to the batch now before you bottle. Typically it is best to cold crash in the bottle after carbonation has been achieved.

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*facepalm*

COLD CRASHING DOES NOT KILL YEAST IT JUST MAKES IT DORMANT!!!! It will drop out of suspension, but it won't die.

When the beer warms back up the yeast wakes up and goes back to work.

OP, as to your other question, more than likely when you lift your beer up to the table to rack it, you will disturb the yeast and kick some more up. But if you're concerned then you could kick some more up, it won't hurt.

When I have a long primary or do an extended secondary I run the bottom of my autosiphon across the bottom of the fermenter when racking to kick some of the yeast back into suspension. I just rub it across the bottom once, let yeast flow for maybe 30 seconds or so, then lift up the AS off the bottom til the beer runs clear and carefully lower it back down. It will make a runnel and remain clear.

You're just kicking up enough yeast to guarantee that there's enough yeast to do the job. But if you are careful you are not making your beer any more cloudy.

Doing that my bottles still are all crystal clear and have little sediment in them.

So it's really up to you. If you tend to get tight yeast cakes after cold crashing, then a little rub wouldn't hurt.

umm...where do you buy yeast? answer: from the refrigerator at your LHBS.
cold crashing does not kill yeast.[/QUOTE]

The yeast from LHBS is in a dormant state that you warm up and add to warm wort. If you cold crash the yeast will drop to the bottom and while they might not die (depends on the strand and temp) you will not have an effective amount in your bottle to do the job. Now this does not mean that it will not carbonate it just means it will take a lot longer to get the job done. You still do not want to disturb the yeast cake at the bottom as there is more then just yeast sitting it it.

Its better to cold crash the bottles in my opinion as I always pour into a glass and leave the sediment behind.

BrewThruYou said:

It will not kill the yeast. Plenty of people cold crash before bottling. I just did this with my last 5 batches and had no issues. I transferred to secondary with gelatin, cold crashed for 2 days, racked cold into bottling bucket on top of priming solution.

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Will there be enough yeast in suspension after cold crashing to carb? SHould i be careful not to disturb the cake as previously suggested?

BrewThruYou said:

Actually, you have to be very careful about oxidation at this point. You want the priming sugar to be mixed, but you don't want to stir so hard that you aerate the beer.

Most people will get the siphon going, dump the priming solution in, and then rack on top. The racking of the beer on top will mix the solution pretty evenly. If you want to be extra cautious, you can gently stir with a sanitized long spoon or something.

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Therein lies my problem, i cant rack on top of the priming sugar because I am unsure how much I will need until after I've racked the beer & measured the volume. I do have another vessel I could rack into & measure then put my priming sugar in the bottling bucket and and then rack into the bottling bucket.. i think id be more comfortable racking twice than trying to stir in priming sugar....

thanks again for everyone's help.

EDIT - sorry, looks like in the time it took me to type this i got some of my q's answered. thanks.

Traditionally when one cold crashes it is in PRIMARY OR SECONDARY, not in the bottle.

The point of cold crashing is to minimize the amount of yeast going to keg or bottle....kinda defeats that purpose if you wait til it's in the bottle dontja think?

Clearing beer with cold temperatures is easy and effective, if you are patient. Ferment your beer as you always do, being sure that you have reached FG and that the beer is ready to be bottled or kegged. Place the fermentor in your lagering/fermenting refrigerator for a minimum of one week at nearly 38F. Given more time, more of the haze producing proteins will coagulate and settle out.

During this time at cold temperatures, proteins and yeast will be settling out of the beer, as they do when you place your bottles of hazy beer in cold storage for long periods. Temperature and time are your friends when you are cold crashing beer. After a minimum of one week at about 38F you can rack your beer off the settled yeast and trub and either bottle or keg it.

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Revvy said:

Traditionally when one cold crashes it is in PRIMARY OR SECONDARY, not in the bottle.

The point of cold crashing is to minimize the amount of yeast going to keg or bottle....kinda defeats that purpose if you wait til it's in the bottle dontja think?

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Actually the purpose of cold crashing is to get the yeast to drop out of suspension. This can be done before or after kegging/bottling. It just makes more sense to let the yeast that is perfectly happy stay happy until you do not need them anymore.

ehedge20 said:

The yeast from LHBS is in a dormant state that you warm up and add to warm wort. If you cold crash the yeast will drop to the bottom and while they might not die (depends on the strand and temp) you will not have an effective amount in your bottle to do the job. Now this does not mean that it will not carbonate it just means it will take a lot longer to get the job done. You still do not want to disturb the yeast cake at the bottom as there is more then just yeast sitting it it.

Its better to cold crash the bottles in my opinion as I always pour into a glass and leave the sediment behind.

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thanks for the advice, unfortunately its already been in the fridge 3-4 days. Ill keep this in mind as an option for next time. Also, this particular batch i may be handing out to a few people, i prefer there NOT to be too much sediment in there in the event they pour the whole thing into a glass.....

xenophobe2020, if you're cold crashing your beer, you're not going to be losing much beer to the trub...you're more than likely going to have pretty close to EXACTLY how much beer you put in there.

After a month in primary I get 5 gallons of beer, because my yeast cake has compacted so much that the the majority of beer is not in the trub layer anymore.

If you put to gallons in you can assume you're going to be close to two gallons when you rack, so you can figure the 1 ounce or priming sugar per gallon of beer, and rack as you would normally, you won't be under or over enough to cause there to be a problem.

The 4.5-5 ounce of sugar/5 gallons puts you in an AVERAGE range of level of co2 for most beers, so if you come out a quart or two less or more on your racked beer, it's really NOT going to be an issue.

Just approximate the amount of beer you think you are going to have and go with the 1 ounce/gallon.....if you're really paranoid, then go with 3/4 of an ounce instead, or someplace in between. It's not rocket science, it doesn't have to be precise.

Don't over think it, don't worry about it, just approximate it and boil it and rack on top........

ehedge20 said:

Actually the purpose of cold crashing is to get the yeast to drop out of suspension. This can be done before or after kegging/bottling. It just makes more sense to let the yeast that is perfectly happy stay happy until you do not need them anymore.

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It might make more sense to someone who actually thinks that yeast dies when you put it in the fridge, but most of us believe that it makes more sense to cold crash the way it has always been thought of....before it goes to kegs or bottles.....That's the traditional thought of what cold crashing is by most everyone on here.

You're trying to reduce the amount of yeast sedimentation actually going into the final package.

ehedge20 said:

If you cold crash the yeast will drop to the bottom and while they might not die (depends on the strand and temp) you will not have an effective amount in your bottle to do the job.

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They definitely will not die at cold crashing temps. And yes, you will have enough yeast in suspension to carbonate.

ehedge20 said:

Now this does not mean that it will not carbonate it just means it will take a lot longer to get the job done.

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Define a lot longer. In my anecdotal evidence, it's a tiny bit longer if it's even longer at all. There is absolutely enough yeast to carbonate a bottle a beer...it's not fermenting an entire batch...it's just chewing up the dextrose you just added.

ehedge20 said:

Its better to cold crash the bottles in my opinion as I always pour into a glass and leave the sediment behind.

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That's great, but a lot of others (myself included) prefer to cold crash before bottling to leave as little yeast as possible in the bottle. Ever notice how Sierra Nevada's bottles have that thin dusting of yeast at the bottom? That's all that's needed...you don't need some thick yeast cake on the bottom of every bottle that could potentially get disturbed - it's just unnecessary.

Revvy said:

It might make more sense to someone who actually thinks that yeast dies when you put it in the fridge, but most of us believe that it makes more since to cold crash the way it has always been thought of....before it goes to kegs or bottles.....That's the traditional thought of what cold crashing is by most everyone on here.

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Cold crashing can kill yeast if you are trying to go to cold as in near freezing or below. This is absolutely possible for those of us with converted freezers as someone trying to cold crash for the first time might try to take it down to 33 deg. and in effect kill the yeast.

The point is cold crashing is cold crashing it does not matter when you do it but it does matter at what temp.

ehedge20 said:

The point is cold crashing is cold crashing it does not matter when you do it

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This totally contradicts everything you said earlier...........

ehedge20 said:

Cold crashing can kill yeast if you are trying to go to cold as in near freezing or below. This is absolutely possible for those of us with converted freezers as someone trying to cold crash for the first time might try to take it down to 33 deg. and in effect kill the yeast.

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Most folk do not go too near freezing temps, a lot of folks who cold crash take it down to below the dormancy temps of the yeast. Most folks don't have the means to go that low, so for all intents and purposes, killing the yeast by taking it to near freezing temps is of little worry.......

Hell, we even cold crash our starters.....


Just admit you've made an erroneous statement about killing the yeast and be done with it, You're digging bigger holes now by trying to argue the point.

Same with cold crashing.... When the majority of brewers hear the term "Cold Crashing" the implication is that the fermenter or secondary is being placed into a cold space for a period of time. That is the traditional view of cold crashing....

I've cold crashed and lagered at 34 degrees for 8 weeks, and it didn't hurt the yeast a bit. It DID take a few days longer to carb up fully, but that could have been because my house temperature is always under 70 degrees.

You definitely don't need to warm up the beer or to add more yeast (or drag your racking cane or whatever), as there are literally billions of yeast still in suspension, even during/after cold crashing.

Anyway, if you have 2 gallons in primary, I would assume you'll end up with 1.75 gallons or so. I usually use 4-5 ounces of corn sugar to carb up 5 gallons of beer, so one ounce of sugar per gallon would be about right. In other words, you could use two ounces of corn sugar (by weight) and be about right for 1.5-2 gallons of beer, giving you a little leeway.

thanks for the reassurance & insight yooper & revvy, ill make an assumption on 1.75 gallons...... and blame you if it turns out wrong

Thanks again for everyone's help on this, I popped one of these beers (prolly prematurely) last night, 6 full days after bottling & it already had good carbonation & tasted great! Great success for my first time bottling I think, it wasnt as labor intensive as I had thought it would be & will definitely start doing more small batches of stuff that I don't want a ton of like this.

Only disappointment for me was on the aroma, it was a 1.07 beer that finished around 1.018, I was hoping for lower. It smells sweeter/maltier than I had intended & not as hoppy as I had hoped. I had dry hopped the 2 gallons with 2 oz of cascade, must not have been enough. Luckily I more than accounted for the high FG with bittering hops, its was definitely as bitter as I wanted. Also, I guess as big as the beer was I should probably have given it more time in the primary, it was only in there 2-1/2 weeks including dry hopping time... unfortunately I had a deadline to get this beer done and got a late start on it and had to bottle when I did. Knowing that I probably shouldnt have brewed it so big, live and learn, live and learn.