Post Bottling Question

Boy am I glad this forum is here...

Anyways, I have a question about what happened last night. I was bottling with my friend (he was pouring sugar while I poured beer), and when we finished, I looked inside the bucket, and there was a bunch of stuff on the bottom. I'm not sure what it was, but it kinda looked like mud, and when I shook the remains of the bucket up with the stuff, it looked like coffee with a lot of milk in it. What is this stuff?


Also, on actually bottling the beer, I put the sugar in, and gave it a little swirl like a seesaw. It foamed up fairly good at first, but then didn't really seem to do anything after that (about an hour or so time). Is it like primary fermentation, and takes a bit of time to really get started? Or was that junk in the bottom of the bucket something that I needed in the bottles?

Hopefully nothing is screwed up...

I'm a little confused by "pouring sugar". You did dissolve and boil it in some water before pouring it into your bottling bucket right?
Actually, it sounds like you may have bottled directly from your primary fermenter and maybe you also just mixed the sugar in dry. I really hope you got it to dissolve decently or you're gonna end up with a few flat beers and a couple overcarbed ones. Watch my video in my sig.

Hmmmm...

Well, I did what the instructions said to do (they kinda sucked, but it was all I had to go on) which was to boil 2 liters of water, and dump it on the extract and sugar. So yeah I guess I did dump it on dry more or less.

I mixed it up pretty good when I started, but maybe it wasn't enough?

The instructions that came with the kit kinda sucked. You had to read a part from 3 different sheets to get the whole picture... Pretty silly. Anyways, one of the other sheets (didn't read it until 5 days ago) said that I was supposed to mix the stuff for the first three days... I thought it wasn't supposed to be disturbed? I don't know... LoL

I'm sorry and really don't mean to rude, so please don't take it that way. I have been brewing for some time now, asked a lot of newbe questions in the beginning, got a lot of great answers, did a lot of research and have hopefully helped a lot of people with simple answers to their questions, but I don't understand what you are talking about at all.

John

I'm a little confused also, but that's ok! It's hard to visualize what you mean but I'll give it a stab.

The mud stuff was the "trub" it sounds like. Flocculated yeast and spent materials on the bottom of the fermenter. That always happens when you brew or make wine. Just leave it in the bottom.

You boil the priming sugar (about 5 ounces for a 5 gallon batch) in 2 cups of boiling water for 10 minutes or so. Let it cool, and add it to your bottling bucket.
Normally when you bottle, you carefully siphon your beer off the trub without disturbing it. You siphon it into another bucket and try to leave behind all the junk. You want clear beer. Like I said, then, you add the cooled priming solution to your bucket, and siphon your beer into that gently without aerating your beer. If you put the tip of the tubing on the very bottom, it will swirl around some and mix up the priming solution. You can gently stir with a sanizited spoon to ensure it mixes well, but I don't. I think the swirling actions mixes it up fine. Then I lift that bucket up to the counter, attach my bottling wand and bottle.

Sounds more complicated than it is. It's pretty straightforward. The beer should be carbonated in 2-3 weeks.

Lorena

Thanks Lorena, that will help me a lot for the next batch.