First Time Bottling Question

Today I bottled my first batch of beer. I transferred from my carboy to a bottling bucket without a problem. While trying to figure out how to get a siphon going to transfer to the bottles my wife suggested use the 5 gallon lemonade jar we had that has a spigot. It sounded good to me so I sanitized the jar and poured the beer from the bucket to the jar. Everything went smoothly and I started bottling.

It wasn't until after I had bottled about a case that I remembered reading about not introducing extra air into the beer during the transfer process. How badly did I mess up?

Dan

Time will tell. Can't say for sure how oxidized it will be, but you probably introduced some O2 into it. Check at your LHBS for a bottling bucket with a spigot. It's strange that you'd be sold a bottling bucket that didn't have one.

ChshreCat said:

Time will tell. Can't say for sure how oxidized it will be, but you probably introduced some O2 into it. Check at your LHBS for a bottling bucket with a spigot. It's strange that you'd be sold a bottling bucket that didn't have one.

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I believe you can just buy the spigot. This would save some $$$.

I've already placed an order for a new bottling bucket with a spigot. I probably could have saved $15 and used the one I had but I figured you can never have too many buckets around.

Thanks for taking the time to answer my question. My wife asked if I was going to throw the beer away but I told her I'd wait to see what happened. I figured throwing it away later after I know it's bad is just as much work as throwing it away now and not knowing.

Dan

scubadan said:

I've already placed an order for a new bottling bucket with a spigot. I probably could have saved $15 and used the one I had but I figured you can never have too many buckets around.

Thanks for taking the time to answer my question. My wife asked if I was going to throw the beer away but I told her I'd wait to see what happened. I figured throwing it away later after I know it's bad is just as much work as throwing it away now and not knowing.

Dan

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Wow, throw away? Thems' some bad words around here. I'm sure your beer will be fine.

More than likely you'll be fine. It usually takes more accidental oxygen than most of our amateur mistakes to actually harm your beer. And if there is O2 damage it usually is a late onset problem affecting longterm storage, so most of the time we consume the beer long before the effects would take place.

Take a read of my bottling thread, there's some info on the process, and some tips to make it easier. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/revvys-tips-bottler-first-time-otherwise-94812/

Thanks for the encouragement and the bottling tips. I had read enough to now better than to do what I did. I just let my inexperience get the best of me.

And I had no intention of tossing it without tasting it first. I've already got my next kit ordered and hope to be brewing my next batch this weekend.

from now on though, whenever you move from one container to the next use a siphon.

I personally use a sipohn from secondary to bottling bucket in fear of losing some beer goodness. I then attach a hose from the bottling buckets spigot and a easy bottle filler so no air in the hose and no lost beer.
As far as the originial question of your quality of beer is of course time will tell. Give it a least the recommended 2 week bottled time and chill a few bottles and taste it. Sometime more time might help but not always true. Did you use priming sugar or drop in sugar Into bottles?

Dalarast said:

Give it a least the recommended 2 week bottled time and chill a few bottles and taste it. Sometime more time might help but not always true. Did you use priming sugar or drop in sugar Into bottles?

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Recommended minimum carbing time for most beers is 3 weeks @ 70 degrees.

Dalarast said:

I personally use a sipohn from secondary to bottling bucket in fear of losing some beer goodness. I then attach a hose from the bottling buckets spigot and a easy bottle filler so no air in the hose and no lost beer.
As far as the originial question of your quality of beer is of course time will tell. Give it a least the recommended 2 week bottled time and chill a few bottles and taste it. Sometime more time might help but not always true. Did you use priming sugar or drop in sugar Into bottles?

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I dissolved 3/4 cup of primimg sugar into 1 cup of water and put it into the bucket before siphoning the beer into the bucket.

Revvy said:

Recommended minimum carbing time for most beers is 3 weeks @ 70 degrees.

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I am making a nut brown ale. It was in the primary for 3 weeks and I was going to bottle condition for 2 weeks before chilling for a week. Do you think I should bottle condition for 3 weeks?

scubadan said:

I am making a nut brown ale. It was in the primary for 3 weeks and I was going to bottle condition for 2 weeks before chilling for a week. Do you think I should bottle condition for 3 weeks?

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You don't chill TILL you know your beer is finished CARBONATING. So after 3 weeks you chill one for a couple days and then check it...if it's carbed more than likely most it not all of the batch is done....if it's not carbed or even if it is carbed yet doesn't taste "right" then it is still green, so you leave it in the warm temps for another week, then check, if the beer is at the taste you like then they are ready to chill and consume.

If you chill the bottles prematurely, then you will interrupt the carbonation process and it will take longer to be ready. Because you will put the yeast to sleep before you finish the job.

Guy's one thing you all need to know, and most of us know from experience, is that you are not in charge of the beer, the yeast is, and they have their own time table. And they've been doing it for millenia, so THEY are the experts not us.

So you shouldn't and can't really impose any kind of time frame on them. You can't really say, "I'm going to move to the next phase ARBITRARILY at such and such time." You can't really have a plan, like you do...You can't just decide your beer is fermented or in this case carbed, by two weeks. You can't wave a magic wand.

It's the same with that silly 1-2-3 rule...you can't and shlouldn't just move the beer willy nilly after one week....that 7 days doesn't factor in the 72 hour lag time that many of us have faced.....If the beer doesn't even begin fermenting til day 3, then if you move the beer out of primary without bothering to take a hydro reading, then more than likely you are interrupting the fermentation process, and MAY get a stuck fermentation.....

In Mr Wizard's colum in BYO while back, he made an interesting analogy about brewing and baking....He said that egg timers are all well and good in the baking process but they only provide a "rule of thumb" as to when something is ready...recipes, oven types, heck even atmospheric conditions, STILL have more bearing on when a cake is ready than the time it says it will be done in the cook book. You STILL have to stick a toothpick in the center and pull it out to see if truly the cake is ready.....otherwise you may end up with a raw cake....

Not too different from our beers....We can have a rough idea when our beer is ready (or use something silly like the 1-2-3 rule (which doesn't factor in things like yeast lag time or even ambient temp during fermentation) and do things to our beer willy nilly....but unless we actually stick "our toothpick" (the hydrometer) in and let it tell us when the yeasties are finished...we too can "f" our beer up.

It's the same with the carbing/conditioning process, as illustrated in what I linked above. If your beer's not carbed or taste funny after three weeks, then leave it alone for a week or two and check again.

It doesn't mean you did anything wrong, or there's something wrong with your beer...it's just means it's not ready yet.

I personally don't even bother check on my beers til it's been 3 weeks in the bottle...AND if it's a higher grav beer, or I know the ambient temp in my apartment is below 70 (which it is most of the year except summer) I don't even expect it to be ready by then...

If you really want to have a higher odds that the beer you grab is ready when you open it? Don't touch one for 6 weeks.....But who among us wants to wait THAT long? I know I can't...But if it is an average grav beer, more than likely it is going to be ready at 3, that's why that is a "rule of thumb," but a rule of thumb is not set in stone.....

Like I have said all over this place, I have had stouts and porters that weren't ready for anywhere between 4 and 8 weeks, and had a 1.090 Belgian that took three months to carb up and still tasted like crap for 6 months, and at 8 months it STILL has an alcohol bite to it.

I can't say this enough, you are not making koolaid, gang, you are working with living creatures who have their OWN agendas and timeframes, despite what yours MIGHT be.

Revvy said:

You don't chill TILL you know your beer is finished CARBONATING. So after 3 weeks you chill one for a couple days and then check it...if it's carbed more than likely most it not all of the batch is done....if it's not carbed or even if it is carbed yet doesn't taste "right" then it is still green, so you leave it in the warm temps for another week, then check, if the beer is at the taste you like then they are ready to chill and consume.

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I was responding with my Blackberry this morning and gave a short response. When I said I was going to chill after 2 weeks, I didn't mean I would chill the whole batch. Right now my beer is bottle conditioning in my "brew closet". I use a space heater in a spare closet to control the temperature which was 72 degrees last night when I checked. I was going to wait 2 weeks before chilling a couple beers and trying it out but I think I'll wait 3 weeks now based on your recommendation. Once I know the beer is carbed, my plan was to take it out of the "brew closet" and store in the basement. I then will put 4-6 in the fridge at a time for drinking.

I really appreciate all of the hand-holding the vets on this board give to the rookies. I'm sure it can get monotonous answering the same questions all of the time but I assure you that it is appreciated. I try to search the site before making a post but it's not always easy for the noob to use the proper terminology to get the right answer to their question. Thanks to all of you who took the time to answer.

Dan

Revvy said:

I can't say this enough, you are not making koolaid, gang, you are working with living creatures who have their OWN agendas and timeframes, despite what yours MIGHT be.

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I explained this to my wife when she started her first batch a beer this weekend that the process is like fishing. You can't drop a line in the water and expect to get a fish at any given time.... if the fish say F you your left to wait until one comes up. Or like raising our kids... no matter how hard you want to MAKE them understand certain things are awaiting on their time schedule.

OP - A rule of thumb I use with bottling beer is I only maybe one beer after my wait period and taste it. I have at first placed entire batches of bottles after my time period and as noted by Reevy my entire batch was "ruined"... I still drank it of course because who am I to waste beer...