New to brewing. Please help!?

Hi guy n gals. New to brewing , I've just bought a starter kit fairly cheap, along with 40 pints of Mexican cerveza, I have followed the instructions and so far all is well. However I am not new to useing a hydrometer, my beer have now been formenting for 5 days , and I have a reading of 1000 , so pretty much finished formenting. , I'm not to sure what the procedure is from now. Some people say leave to to clear for a few weeks before bottleing , others say bottle it now , add half a tea spoon of sugar , and leave to 'chill' for 2 weeks. Can someone tell me what the procedure is from once the beer has finished formenting ?! Thanks guys.

At this point, I personally put the beer into a secondary and add Knox gelatin for a few days. It helps clarify the beer prior to bottling. (in addition to cold crashing). Just my opinion.

Cheers guys. Muchly appreciated!! Least I know the basics so hopefuly my first batch won't be too bad ! Notice the 'too' in that sentence ha! , I've heard Irish moss is a good thinking agent to clear ur homebrew. Any of you guy recommend this? If so how and when to add to the fermenter ? Once again. Thanks for all your info and help !

maxwell89 said:

Cheers guys. Muchly appreciated!! Least I know the basics so hopefuly my first batch won't be too bad ! Notice the 'too' in that sentence ha! , I've heard Irish moss is a good thinking agent to clear ur homebrew. Any of you guy recommend this? If so how and when to add to the fermenter ? Once again. Thanks for all your info and help !

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Irish Moss is added to the boil with about 10 - 15 minutes left, not the fermenter. I use Whirfloc tablets, it's the same thing. It helps to clump the break material together for easier clearing in the fermenter. I'm a fan, you don't have to use much and it does help.

Cheered guys. I've heard pectolase helps clear, will this help clear my larger? Or is pectolase only used for clearing wine ? Sorry about maybe obvious questions. But once I know I know!

I'm not sure but I suspect that pectolase is only useful for removing the haze left by cooking fruit. I had bad pectin haze in an apple ale I made because I cooked applesauce to put in it.

5 days is not long enough and you should leave the beer in the primary vessel for at least another week to allow the yeast to "clean up" and clear the beer. Since this is your first go around I would personally forget about using any fining agents. The beer should clear itself nicely without it.

As for bottling, you are much better off bulk priming the entire batch so read this thread and you will learn everything you need to know about bottling, conditioning, and most importantly, being patient
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/bottling-tips-homebrewer-94812/

U guys are awsome. So helpful !! I shall let u knowww things turn out !

Anyone know how long beer takes to carbonate from when u add sugar to the bottles ? Unfortunately couldn't bulk prime so as my first go went with the teaspoon on sugar to each bottle , however the next batch will be bulk primed!

Takes the same amount of time as it would doing bulk priming. I've done a few batches direct addition of sugar to the bottles and the results were all decent.

Generally you are looking at about 3 weeks if you have them sitting at 70F (20C).

The bigger and more complex the beer, the longer it will take. I've had a simple witbier that was nicely carbed and drinkable after 10 days and likewise a couple of ESBs and an IPA that I didn't have to wait 3 weeks before sampling, and they didn't disappoint.

Still no fizz in the bottles. Maybe I didn't mix the aight in and it's sitting at the bottle of all the bottles ? Or maybe my yeast is dead? Any ideas? What about carbonation drops? :/

Figure 3 weeks at 70 degrees to properly carb and bottle condition, minimum. Heavier beers tend to take longer. There's a really good sticky on the forum about this