Had the worst bottle day..

Was looking forward to bottling my IPA today and had nothing but troubles racking off the secondary! I thought I'd try and screen the beer with a cheese bag over the cane to help get the suspended hops out. I contemplated over this all day yesterday, and wish I had chosen not to do it! It started off fine, but as I got down towards the bottom, my flow stopped. Had to remove the cane, take the hop bag off, sanatize and start the siphon over again. By this time I had stirred up the hop mess that had settled out.

I ended up getting 4 3/4 gallon of beer out of it, but when the siphoned started up again, it shot a hose full of air into the beer. Hopefully, the shot of air doesn't mess things up. I finally got everything into the bucket, and let it settle for about 45 minutes.

The directions call for 3.5-4 oz of sugar.. depending on yield. So I opted for around 3.7 oz.. I hope this is enough for carbonation.

I know everyone says that your worst beer days tend to be the best beers you brew, so I'm hoping for the best! This beer has been troublesome since the begining.

Yep, worst bottling day I ever had was my Breakfast stout clone. Put 2 oz of ground coffee straight into the kettle at flameout, didn't bother using a bag or filtering them out. They found a way to lodge themselves into my bottle filler ever other bottle, requiring me to take off the filler, run water through it backwards, then sanitize everything and put it back together, at least 20 times before everything was said and done. It did turn out quite phenomenal though, so I'd say it was worth it.

My last bottle day I dropped my first bottle while I was capping. It shattered...of course...and I spent the next hour trying to clean up glass and beer before bottling the remaining 50 bottles.

That's tough... I've screened the beer several times, but place it on the hose side, not the cane. I'm sure they will still turn out stellar.

If everything goes right, you should stop and take a very close look at everything you are doing, because it rarely goes 100% perfect.

maffewl said:

That's tough... I've screened the beer several times, but place it on the hose side, not the cane. I'm sure they will still turn out stellar.

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I thought about doing this as well. Although next time I think ill rack without a screen. By the time everything was said and done I probably sucked up more trub then I would have if I racked without a screen. Live and learn ! I'll just have more sediment than I expected.