Red ale in the bottle, now I wait...

I just bottled my first brew yesterday, 2 cases of Brewers Best Red Ale. Things seem to be going well thus so far. A little under a week in primary and two full weeks in secondary. FG was around 1.015 and it tasted pretty good, very smooth and citrusy. I sanitized my pre-washed bottles in the dishwasher and filled the bottles right on the open door of the dishwasher, nice neat process. The only thing I'm a little concerned about is that I managed slosh some beer around with the siphon when mixing with the priming sugar, plus things seemed a bit turbid when I filled the bottles with the wand. From what I've heard and read the end of the world is not at hand, everyone tends to be a bit paranoid about oxygenation and/or infection, which I can understand. At any rate, I'm putting my worries aside and patiently awaiting to sample my first bottle. Can I wait two weeks? Probably not.

I brew my next batch of American Amber Ale on Friday. I'm going to be adding Irish Moss during the boil and give it 3 full weeks in primary then straight to the bottles. I'll see if this improves my clarity.

I believe it is going to be fine, plus you'll be so happy drinking your first glass of home brew that you won't even care.

No worries the idea is to minimize oxiidation by a gentle racking/botteling process. I used a filter over my autosiphon on a irish blonde and it bubbled the crap out of it on the way to the botteling bucket,Ive been drinking them sporaticly for a few months and not getting any ill-effects.Drink them while they are good. A tiny bit of sloshing wont do anything.

Doesn't sound like you did anything catastrophic. Just to clarify...you didn't use detergent in the dishwasher.

Best of luck on your next brew. Irish Moss is a great adjunct for clarifying, but you can't go wrong with a good secondary. Enjoy your ale when it comes of age.

Thanks for the support and input.

Nope, no detergent in the dishwasher. They were pre-cleansed before I ran them through a cycle with just hot water and a hot dry. Bottles were still a bit warm when I took them out to fill.

To wash and de-label my bottles I use Trader Joe's Dishwasher Detergent. No chlorine or phosphates, which aren't needed for general cleansing. It contains sodium carbonate and citric acid, which are great label and glue removers. I give the bottles a good soak in the hot solution in a bucket for less than an hour. The labels slide right off and the glue wipes right off as well. I then give the insides a good brushing, dump, rinse and blast out the insides with a bottle jet before drying. No need for a bottle tree, a clean dishwasher rack works great for drying. On bottling day I give the insides one more good blast on the jet washer and throw them in the dishwasher for the final sanitizing.

That's my bottle washing process.

That's how i clean my bottles too...you're fine.

Give us an update when the beer is ready.

Thanks, we'll see how long I can wait. now back to brewing...

Is bottle conditioning likely to aid in clarification? I had a fair amount of settling occur in primary and secondary, but things were still a little soupy in the sample. Maybe I shouldn't worry about clarity in my first batch so much, time to get stuff together for tomorrows batch.

Woodland said:

Is bottle conditioning likely to aid in clarification? I had a fair amount of settling occur in primary and secondary, but things were still a little soupy in the sample. Maybe I shouldn't worry about clarity in my first batch so much, time to get stuff together for tomorrows batch.

Click to expand...

Yes and very much over time.