Is This Normal? (Photos)

jump_xiii said:

This sounds exactly like my first kit. It isn't a lager, it's a pale ale in the style of a lager- I guess it's a marketing thing- people where I am (the UK) want to drink lagers, so call it a pale ale on the box and sales will go down. I had a BrewBuddy lager kit for my first brew and followed the instructions (yours sound the same as mine). My beer was... drinkable. Since then I've done other similar kits and left them longer before bottling and my beer now is... better.

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I'd rather it was an ale than a lager to be honest, wish I had bought another can of ingredients instead of using the one with the kit.

I'll leave it another week or two. Should all the bubbles/froth (or krausen - if that's the correct term) be gone and I be left with a relatively smooth liquid with no head?

So it's been about 3.5 weeks since I started the brew and I'm all set to bottle this evening. Few questions:

1. Any last minute tips on bottling? I'm going to have to sterilise each 500ml bottle - is there any efficient way of doing 40 odd bottles? I'll also have to sterilise the tube going from the brew container to the bottles, best way to do that? I'm worried there might still be some sterilising powder left over that could be fatal to the brew!

2. Once each bottle is filled (near enough full is a good amount?), I then add a spoon of sugar as per recipe and cap? Or do I leave it for a bit before capping?

3. I don't really have a lot of space to store 40 bottles, so the places I can find might have temperature fluctuations. How important is a consistent "room" temperature when it has been bottled?

4. Once bottled, will the beer keep "maturing" until I put them in the fridge? Once they are chilled in the fridge, all fermentation will stop?

I want to avoid exploding bottles and my brew turning sour from unclean bottles!

A spoon of sugar sure sounds like a lot, but I've never added per bottle that way, so I'm not sure.
Here's a great thread on bottling.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/bottling-tips-homebrewer-94812/

Kila said:

So it's been about 3.5 weeks since I started the brew and I'm all set to bottle this evening. Few questions:

1. Any last minute tips on bottling? I'm going to have to sterilise each 500ml bottle - is there any efficient way of doing 40 odd bottles? I'll also have to sterilise the tube going from the brew container to the bottles, best way to do that? I'm worried there might still be some sterilising powder left over that could be fatal to the brew!

2. Once each bottle is filled (near enough full is a good amount?), I then add a spoon of sugar as per recipe and cap? Or do I leave it for a bit before capping?

3. I don't really have a lot of space to store 40 bottles, so the places I can find might have temperature fluctuations. How important is a consistent "room" temperature when it has been bottled?

4. Once bottled, will the beer keep "maturing" until I put them in the fridge? Once they are chilled in the fridge, all fermentation will stop?

I want to avoid exploding bottles and my brew turning sour from unclean bottles!

Click to expand...

Since you are carbing & conditioning in the bottle, you'll want to store the bottles for 2-3 weeks at room temp to allow the remaining yeast to carbonate the beer with the additional fermentable "sugars" you add.

Most people suggest calculating the total amount of fermentable sugars and adding that to the bottling bucket in a dissolved liquid state, then racking the beer on top of it. If I was going to add sugar directly to each bottle I'd do it first, then rack the beer on top of it.

As for sanitizing, look into a good liquid no rinse sanitizer like Star San, and get a spray bottle you can fill with it for all your intermittent step sanitizing. or sanitizing the bottles you can either fill a bucket/sink with water/star san mix and submerge the bottles or better yet use a vinator. Keep the bottle caps in a jar of sanitizer and plan on having about 4-5 more caps than you need in case you drop some

Revvy has a great walkthrough at https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/bottling-tips-homebrewer-94812/

Thanks for responses! I've had a look at Revvy's thread, for the next brew, some modifications to my bucket to make this process easier!

I'll make sure to put the sugar in first. I've noticed others in Revvy's thread mention a bottling bucket - what is the purpose of a second bucket? Do you put all the sugar you'll need in there, let it dissolve then transfer all 5 gallons into that, then fill the bottles from that bucket?

Kila said:

Thanks for responses! I've had a look at Revvy's thread, for the next brew, some modifications to my bucket to make this process easier!

I'll make sure to put the sugar in first. I've noticed others in Revvy's thread mention a bottling bucket - what is the purpose of a second bucket? Do you put all the sugar you'll need in there, let it dissolve then transfer all 5 gallons into that, then fill the bottles from that bucket?

Click to expand...

Yup, the bottling bucket is usually where people add their priming sugar. I force carb in kegs, but if I was bottling I would disolve my priming sugar in some warm water (ala simple syrup style) and add that sugar syrup to the bottling bucket, then 'rack' my 5 gallons of beer from the primary fermenter, into the bottling bucket and bottle from there.

Bottling buckets usually have a spout and sometimes a dip tube to make an gravity fed auto siphon and by racking to a bottling bucket you get the beer off the yeast cake and will end up with less of the yeast cake/trub making it into your bottles. By bottle carbing/conditioning you will end up with a yeast layer on the bottom of the bottle anyways, which means you'll want to slow pour and not pour the last 1/4 - 1/2 inch of beer.

So got it bottled on the 16th April - wasn't as crazy as I was expecting, but still messy! Didn't experience any problems, and it tasted quite nice when I was syphoning (a flat pale ale pretty much!). Since I was adding the sugar to each bottle using a tea spoon (half measure), each bottle varied in the amount of sugar it got, though it was definitely round about half a tea spoon as per kit instructions.

The bottles were cloudy, but cleared out this week. I turned one bottle upside down and back again and it's been cloudy past couple of days gradually settling again.

So I've got a couple of questions:

1. Should I just leave the bottles? Or does turning them upside down and back again to get the yeast going through it help?

2. Can you tell if the carbonation is working without opening a bottle? Any signs? I'm worried about the sugar levels not being enough and ending up with flat beer.

3. I'm planning to drink these on the 7th May (3 weeks since bottling) - will they definitely be grand then? When should I put them in the fridge? Should I leave half the bottles for 5 weeks?

1) Yes - leave them. No shaking/turning required. Looks pretty sunny there though - move to a dark location

2) Sometimes I'll shake one just to see the bubbles. But just be patient and let the yeast do their thing.

They don't get any direct sunlight - it looks bright in the photo because I had the lights on and boosted the exposure on the camera. Generally it is a room that has light coming in, but never particularly bright and they never get hit by sunlight - is that fine? I've no space otherwise!

Just cover with a towel or blanket.

I tried one for the beers after leaving them in the bottles for 2 weeks just to see how it was coming along.

Tasted drinkable, and had a head etc. But tasted slightly watery and wasn't that fizzy - will an extra week carbonate it more? Why does it taste slightly watery?

There are some really good vids on youtube regarding carbonation with time lapse. The longer you leave them, the the better they'll be. As far as watery, it could just be a weak beer. Not having gravity readings, we don't really know what the alcohol percentage is. I had a barely drinkable beer my very first kit using 2 cans. 1 was pre-hopped, the other was just the extract with no hops (so about 6.6lbs of LME). I was about to poor them down the drain after the first month. However, 6 months later, I remembered them in the garage and popped one open. It was an entirely new beer. Time does amazing things!