Had to use bottling bucket as primary, need some help.

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Dolemite78

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As some of you may have read in a previous post of mine, last week I had a mishap with one of my fermenters and had to use a bottling bucket for one of my batches. No big deal, I have read about using a wedge to keep the trub away from the spigot when I bottle. My concern and request for advice follows;

Boundry Waters Wheat 5 gallon batch

1. How do I carbonate w/ my priming sugar in the bottling bucket? I will use 5oz of corn sugar dissolved in water. Should I just pour it in the top of the bottling bucket and gently stir? I don't want to disturb the trub and don't want to aerate, I assume I run the risk of both if I do it this way.

2. I would also like to rack 2.5gal as a Peach Wheat using extract, and the remaining 2.5gal as an Apricot Wheat, also extract. What process would you recommend for completing this? I could add priming sugar in bottling bucket and just bottle my first 2.5gal into growlers with .5 oz of the peach extract per growler. Then when I had just 2.5 left I could add 2 oz of apricot to the bottling bucket, gently stir, and continue bottling in bottles ( I only have about 6 growlers available).

There is a possibility that my other primary (which currently has a film/texture from letting oxiclean and water soak way too long) will clean up based off cleaning suggestions from this board. If that is the case I will rack the beer to it for carbing, then back to the cleaned out bottling bucket 2.5 gal at a time for extract addition.
 
You should be ok adding your priming liquid into your primary and gently stiring. I imagine you would disturb the trub a bit though.. Maybe just prime each seperate bottle instead of priming the bucket.

You can def bottle in the growlers with extract in each one. My concern would be adding the other extract to your primary/bottling bucket for the rest of the batch and having the extract get lost/mixed into your trub.
 
Agreed. Maybe I'll just acquire some more growlers. I have at least a week before I will bottle, maybe longer depending on my hydrometer readings. Should be ample time to load up on some Home Brew from a local place here in NM and create empty growlers.
 
I ferment in bottling buckets on occasion. Just sanitize the valve at the bottom, attach a hose and transfer to another botting bucket. You do get a hefty shot of sediment when you first crack the valve. You can dump the first cup of beer or so into a waste container to eliminate the sediment (thorw it in the fridge to settle out and then drink it). If you don't have another bottling bucket, well, I guess I would vote for adding the priming solution to the bottles vs stirring on the primary yeast cake.
 
I don't have another bottling bucket, wish I did. Planned on ordering one this week, but my last shipment was very slow for some reason. I may stop by my LHBS, which isn't so local, and buy one from them. My hope is that the other primary cleans up. I have it soaking in vinegar and water right now, then will rinse and add a double shot of StarSan as suggested by someone else. I can't believe how much damage the inside of my primary took just from having water and oxiclean soaking it.
 
Might be easiest to just grab some carb tabs from your LHBS just for this time, if you can get the carbonation levels you want with them. That way you can just drop them into the bottles and not have to stir up your trub.
 
Whoa! If you are using the growlers for secondary with the flavoring, OK. If you are going to use them as bottles and carb them up, don't. Growlers are not meant to take the pressure built with carbing beer. I would suggest you not use the growlers for that purpose. You might try using carb tabs and dividing the flavoring into the bottles and then racking the beer into them.
 
That's a good thought, that for some reason or the other didn't cross my mind. I did just realize that I have an old Mr. Beer keg w/ a spigot, which helps me with splitting the batch to add extract, just doesn't help with the priming solution as it only holds 2.5gal. Actually I suppose I could try to split the 5oz of corn sugar in half and prime 2.5 gal at a time.. I think I just came up with my solution.
 
That's a good thought, that for some reason or the other didn't cross my mind. I did just realize that I have an old Mr. Beer keg w/ a spigot, which helps me with splitting the batch to add extract, just doesn't help with the priming solution as it only holds 2.5gal. Actually I suppose I could try to split the 5oz of corn sugar in half and prime 2.5 gal at a time.. I think I just came up with my solution.

Dynomite, Dolemite!

Much better solution than growlers.
 
Whoa! If you are using the growlers for secondary with the flavoring, OK. If you are going to use them as bottles and carb them up, don't. Growlers are not meant to take the pressure built with carbing beer. I would suggest you not use the growlers for that purpose. You might try using carb tabs and dividing the flavoring into the bottles and then racking the beer into them.

I've heard several differing opinions on using growlers to bottle, and I certainly understand the cons, and/or potential mishaps. Having said that, I have bottled into growlers for carbing for years (going back to my Mr. Beer days) and never had any problem whatsoever.

I suppose I'll learn when something goes bad, but until then I'll probably continue to use them. I typically bottle a 5 gallon batch half in growlers and half in bottles, never noticed a difference other than the growlers seem to need any extra week conditioning to acheive a similar carb level as the bottles.
 
I feel like carbing anything in glass is playing the numbers. Most of the time it works fine, but once in a while, boom! I don't have any experience, and maybe growlers are configured differently, but it seems like they would work just as well as a brown bottle. If anyone has a definitive reason why they wouldn't I'd like to hear it.
 
I feel like carbing anything in glass is playing the numbers. Most of the time it works fine, but once in a while, boom! I don't have any experience, and maybe growlers are configured differently, but it seems like they would work just as well as a brown bottle. If anyone has a definitive reason why they wouldn't I'd like to hear it.

Simply put- beer bottles are designed to withstand the pressures generated during carbing. Growlers only need to hold the beer and take the pressure generated from whatever CO2 comes out of solution after filling.

When you're carbing in glass, you generate CO2 that goes into the headspace of the bottle and creates high pressures. Over time, this high pressure forces the CO2 to dissolve back into the liquid and the pressure in the bottle goes down.
 
Our first batch was done in the bottling bucket. We ended up using Coopers carb drops, worked like a champ. Just watch the first glass or so that comes out of the spigot, its full of trub and yeastcake.
 
Simply put- beer bottles are designed to withstand the pressures generated during carbing. Growlers only need to hold the beer and take the pressure generated from whatever CO2 comes out of solution after filling.

When you're carbing in glass, you generate CO2 that goes into the headspace of the bottle and creates high pressures. Over time, this high pressure forces the CO2 to dissolve back into the liquid and the pressure in the bottle goes down.

Does anyone know what is specific about the design that makes the bottles more condusive to handling the pressure? I'm a simple man and think in simple terms, which probably means my thought process is wrong. I always assumed the main factor in the durability of a glass ie not blowing up under too much pressure, had to do with how thick the glass was. In my mind, thicker, heavier glass would lead to a more durable vessel. Considering almost every growler I've seen seems to be made of thicker glass than a regular bottle, my assumption was that it was "stronger" than normal beer bottles. Also having had dropped both on a floor at one time or another, it seemed that while a regular bottle would break, the growler was more prone to bounce or chip, but at least survive.
 
Does anyone know what is specific about the design that makes the bottles more condusive to handling the pressure? I'm a simple man and think in simple terms, which probably means my thought process is wrong. I always assumed the main factor in the durability of a glass ie not blowing up under too much pressure, had to do with how thick the glass was. In my mind, thicker, heavier glass would lead to a more durable vessel. Considering almost every growler I've seen seems to be made of thicker glass than a regular bottle, my assumption was that it was "stronger" than normal beer bottles. Also having had dropped both on a floor at one time or another, it seemed that while a regular bottle would break, the growler was more prone to bounce or chip, but at least survive.

I'm definitely not an expert or a physicist, but a quick googling reveals that the beer volume to headspace ratio is a large part of the equation. Growlers are usually filled with little to no headspace for CO2. This suggests you could possibly try it as long as you were leaving enough room in the top of the growler. That would require striking a perfect balance between headspace and oxidation, and I'm not sure how you would arrive at the appropriate mix.

Could it also be that the ratio of glass to beer volume has something to do with the strength of the vessel? Would more beer (as in a growler) require much much thicker glass (thicker than they already have I mean) due to much smaller surface area to volume ratio? Again, I'm definitely not an expert in packaging or statics/dynamics, just making wild random guesses.

Could be that this is just another one of those wildly popular homebrewing myths, but it seems like there is at least a little merit to it (like most myths, I suppose). That said- it's not something I'm going to test, nor have I ever carbed in growlers before. Grains of salt for EVERYONE:ban:
 
I am late to the game, but ever thought of racking off to 1 gallon jugs? You could get those 1 gallon apple juice containers, fit them with a stopper and blowoff tube then take your time cleaning out your bottling bucket. Of course from there bottle rinse, sterilize and repeat. Just a thought and you can pick those up (full of apple juice of course ) at almost any grocery store.
 
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