is there any way to avoid the sediment in bottles?

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xbabyboy4021x

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i just started brewing beer and i find it kind of a pain in the ass when every time i give somebody a bottle of my brew i have to explain to them how they have to pour it out to avoid pouring out the sediment at the bottom of the bottle...is there any way to avoid having to do this? a friend told me he knows a guy who brews his own beer and gave him one in a bottle that had no sediment at all and he could drink it straight from the bottle, does he like filter it and force carbonate it in a keg or something and then transfer to bottles or something like that? or is there a cheap way i could accomplish this?
 
You'd have to force carb the beer. Normally this is done in a keg and then bottled from the keg. The sad fact is that if you carb in the bottle, the sediment is a necessary by-product of the yeast doing their thang.
 
Cheap way? No. Possible, probably.
You could filter, but to do this effectively you'll need a kegging setup so you can push the beer through a filter. If you've got the kegging setup you probably won't need the filter, but you will need some type of counterpressure filler. There's a thread here about a way to do it without a commercially bought one, do a search for "we don't need no stinking" and I think you'll find it.
 
Hard to carb it without yeast (read sediment). Youd need to carb it with CO2, but then youd probably be kegging.
 
This comes up a lot from new brewers, especially since we in the states have grown up with fizzy yellow DEAD BEER as opposed beer cultures where living beers (such as homebrew) are consumed...

Here's a rant I wrote on this subject, don't take it personal I'm not ranting at you....It just contains some info you might be able to use in your edumacation of you, your friends and family about "living beers."

Some homebrewers on here who make labels for the beers they give away usually have a note on it about living yeasts and pouring properly. IIRC, someone on here has a logo with a graphic on one of the side panels showing how to pour. If you are giving your beers away you might want to consider doing the same.

I wish I could recall who did it for the label.


Anyway here's the "rant." (like I said it was to someone else.)

Drink bud....otherwise get used to it.

It's a fact of life when you make living beers. Unless you keg or force carb there needs to be living yeast in your beer to carb and conditiion.

Rather than try to avoid it you should relish in the fact that you have made REAL LIVING BEER as opposed to tasteless and processed commercial crap...It's not to be dreaded it's to be celebrated.

Learn to pour homebrew properly and get over it...

[youtube]xyXn4UBjQkE[/youtube]

The Belgians practically worship it, for all it's healthful benefits...

brewersyeast.jpg


Think of carbing/conditioning as another (but tiny) fermentation, in a small (12, 16, or 22 ounce) carboy. The yeast converts the sugar (priming solution) to a miniscule amount of alcohol (not really enough to change the abv of the beer) and CO2...The CO2 builds up in the headspace, is trapped and is reabsorbed in the solution...

Most of the time we don't notice this, (except for new brewers who stare at their bottles then start a "wtf" thread) but depending on the yeast, a mini krauzen forms on top of the bottle, then it falls, like in your fermenter and that becomes the "sludge" at the bottom of the bottles. As it falls it also scrubs the beer clean of many off flavors on the way down.

This is very similar to the trub at the bottom of your fermenter, only obvioulsy much much smaller.

Now some yeast are more flocculant then others, also depending on some brewing things one may do, some beers have very little noticeable yeast at the bottom, either because it just din't form that much OR it wasn't very flocculant and it is still in solution.

A long primary helps tighten the cake in primary, as does crash cooling...Racking to a secondary, adding finings and crash cooling all affect how much yeast is in suspension in the beer to help carb it...Also the type of yeast will change the amount of apparant yeast in the bottom, or in solution...

Also chilling the bottles down for at least a week after the 3 weeks @ 70 will help make the beer clearer and pull the yeast down to the bottom.

When I bottle I always run the autosiphon once across the bottom of the fermenter to make sure I DO kick up enough yeast for carbonation.

A lot of my beers have very little yeast at the bottom of the bottle, some appear to not have any at all, even though they seem to carb up fine.

also remember SOME beers, like Hefes are supposed to be cloudy with suspended yeasts.

For me personally, sometimes I intentionally dump the yeast in my glass, other times I do the "pour to the shoulder" method, where you watch the yeast mover up to the shoulder of the beer, and stop pouring just as the yeast is about to come out...

Now as opposed to the OP that thinks filtered dead beers are better than real beers, here's a pretty comrehensive list of all the commercial beers that are bottle conditioned...it's not too up to date though...but it is impressive...this is what a lot of us who ACTUALLY BOTTLE HARVEST THE GLORIOUS YEASTS from beers to capture the strains, use as a rough reference...

Yeasts from Bottle Conditioned Beers


Now if you look at this list, and then compare it to the "clear beers" (meaning BMC) you will quickly see that the kind of beer the OP is referring to is actually in the minority..

See there are actually more commercial bottle conditioned WITH YEAST SEDIMENT in stores, in bottleshops, and in most of our fridges than there are dead and filtered beers...

I enter contests...and placed decently last summer....in fact the biggest comments I got this summer was on the CLARITY of my beer..one of my beers was describes as being jewell like...and ruby like...I believe it comes from the fact that I leave it in primary for a month..use finings to clear it, and give it a nice period of bottle conditioning, make sure I cool the wort quicky and chill long enough to eliminate haze..... In other words brew properly....

If you work on you beer process, AND pour properly yeast sediment is not really an issue...it's a tiny bit of beer left behind in the bottle where there is a glass of uber clear beer. There's no yeast in this beerglass of mine, what little there is is still in the bottle.

pizza_and_beer.jpg


Even if you do decide to go the expensive route of some sort of filter setup, you are going to do what the BMC manufacturers end up doing, sacrificing flavor for the sake of comsetic clarity...you can't really filter the yeast out in such a way that lets all the complex flavors of your beers come through...so of those
proteins and other things that give you beer a freshness get filtered out too.

Hope this helps you be a better beer advocate!!!

We even had the telling your friends disccusion before...

FWIW I completely agree that educating people about bottle conditioned beers is a good thing, and have no qualms about doing that to my friends. But on the other hand, if a friend of a friend (or someone I didn't know but wanted to welcome to my house as a guest) came round, and the first conversation we had was me lecturing them on how to drink a beer, I would feel a bit of an uptight wanker. And much as I know that bottle-conditioned beer kicks ass, I'd still much rather not have to stand by the fridge checking that everyone was capable of operating a bottle of beer safely.

Who said you have to be an "uptight wanker" to educate?



I present to you;

Yeastie Boyz

A one act play by Revvy

Cast
HB) = Homebrewer
G) = Guest.

Scene, a living room, G and HB are hanging out watching the game.

HB) Hey you wanna try one of my beers?

G) Sure

HB grabs bottle, glass and bottle opener. Proceeds to open and pour beer properly.

HB) I dunno if you know this, but as opposed to BMC's this beer and most micro brews are alive?

G)Huh? Wha?

HB) They're still alive. See the macroswill makers pretty much kill their beers so they last on the shelf. They pasturize them and filter out the yeast, and to me, most of the flavor...that's why I like to brew, and like to go to brewpubs and stuff.

But these beers, and ones like Rogue, and Bell's don't filter, in fact the yeast is still in the bottle and that's how the beer gets carbonated.

B) Really?

HB holds up bottle to the light, showing the dregs.

HB) Yeah, see this stuff at the bottom? That's the yeast....notice how clear your beer is? If I had poured it in you beer it would have been cloudy, but I poured the beer til this stuff got to the shoulder of the bottle, leaving it behind.

HB knocks back the yeast dregs.

Actually the stuffs really good for you it's full of vitamin b and stuff. Sometimes I don't bother leaving it behind and just dump it in the bottle. And some beers like Wheats are meant to be cloudy with suspended yeast. There's different types of beer yeasts, and they give beers different tastes. Some yeast give the beer the flavor of Banana, or cloves.

Or like this beer here the yeast gives it this quality (Hb describes the yeast in the beer guest is drinking.) Can you taste it?

Some of us homebrewers actually capture the yeast from some of the beers, and grow our own cultures with them. Some are really awesome and hard to get.

G)Wow, I didn't know you knew so much about this stuff...cool.

HB) Thanks, didja know that the yeasts are so important to the Belgian brewers that guard their yeast like it was fort knox? Some of them take it so seriously that they actually filter out the strain they fermented with, and then replace it with a different one to bottle carb and condition them? They actually take out one strain (like the BMC'ers do) BUT they still add yeast at bottling time...it's that important to them.

G) What?

HB) Yeah and brewers and even some homebrewers who go to Belgian, actually try to steal samples of the yeast.

G) No ****?

HB) Yeah it's pretty wild, huh? Hey you wanna try another of my beers, maybe a wheat or a belgian that has a really yeasty character?

G) Yeah sure.

HB hands G a bottle, class and bottle openner

HB)Ok dude, I showed you how to pour to the shoulder of the bottle, so why don't you give it a try?

G) Cool! So will you teach me how to brew sometime?

HB) Yeah, I'm brewing this weekend, come on by Sat. Morning.
Smiles knowing he's converted another one to the 'darkside.'

G) SO can I make a beer like bud lite?

HB smacks G over the head with beer bottle

The End

(Just kidding about the last part) :D


So, what's wankery about that?


Remember Yeast is your friend!

:mug:
 
you know something no one ever mentions... that isn't really reasonable imo but hey it works:

Méthode Champenoise
Champagne (wine) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

That's becasue only you and one other person on here knows anything about it...the other poster (I can't recall who inevitbaly posts the same link in the thread.)
:D
Not many people know anything about champaigne production...

Besides who's REALLY got a setup where they can actually do this for 2 whole cases of beer?

Méthode Champenoise is the traditional method by which Champagne is produced. After primary fermentation and bottling, a second alcoholic fermentation occurs in the bottle. This second fermentation is induced by adding several grams of yeast (usually Saccharomyces cerevisiae, although each brand has its own secret recipe) and several grams of rock sugar[12]. According to the Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée a minimum of 1.5 years is required to completely develop all the flavour. For years where the harvest is exceptional, a millesimé is declared. This means that the champagne will be very good and has to mature for at least 3 years. During this time the champagne bottle is sealed with a crown cap similar to that used on beer bottles.[2]

After ageing, the bottle is manipulated, either manually or mechanically, in a process called remuage (riddling, in English), so that the lees settle in the neck of the bottle. After chilling the bottles, the neck is frozen, and the cap removed. The pressure in the bottle forces out the ice containing the lees, and the bottle is quickly corked to maintain the carbon dioxide in solution. Some syrup is added to maintain the level within the bottle.[2]



Have you actually done it? Does this work with beer, or is it more brewer theory? People post this method in threads like this all the time, but a link is useless...noone actually describes their procedure...maybe is someone did then more people would do it. Though it seems waaay out of the league of most homebrewer...I mean I wouldn't mess with this process, when a shoulder pour nets the same results.

If you've actually done it, write it up and post pictures.

It seems like it's not something applicable to the homebrewer...for one thing who wants to waste 100 crown caps, opening each one, removing the less and then re-capping and besides, I can't lay 48 bottles on their side in a freezer.

IMHO, If it's not reasonable to do on our scale than it is useless to the discussion at hand...It just lends to more confusion for the new homebrewer, especially one who thinks yeast is evil.
 
I've seen it done with some homemade sparkling wine. I think the guy aged the wine upside down for about 6 months after it was already very brilliant from the fermenter. He then used a wide plastic container with acetone and dry ice to quickly freeze the ends of the bottles.

Not cost or time efficient, but fun.
 
Have you actually done it? Does this work with beer, or is it more brewer theory? People post this method in threads like this all the time, but a link is useless...noone actually describes their procedure...maybe is someone did then more people would do it. Though it seems waaay out of the league of most homebrewer...I mean I wouldn't mess with this process, when a shoulder pour nets the same results.

If you've actually done it, write it up and post pictures.

I've never done it, but it has been done. Methode Champenoise for Beer - Maltose Falcons Home Brewing Society (Los Angeles Homebrewing)

And there's even photos!
 
well, i'm no expert here, but my first batch of beer, all my sediment was sold at the bottom of the bottles and had to be seriously agitated to get it out, more so then just a swirl or anything.

I don't know if I did something wrong, or if it was just a product of the recipe and the yeast, but I was able to drink straight from the bottles.
 
well, i'm no expert here, but my first batch of beer, all my sediment was sold at the bottom of the bottles and had to be seriously agitated to get it out, more so then just a swirl or anything.

I don't know if I did something wrong, or if it was just a product of the recipe and the yeast, but I was able to drink straight from the bottles.

How much $$$$ did you get for it?

:p:D:):mug:

Tim
 
I find that if after conditioning your homebrew at room temperature for a minimum of three weeks, if you place it in the fridge for 3 or 4 days before serving, the sediment will be a solid layer on the bottom. It is very hard to stir it up.

IMHO, all beer should poured into a glass. It allows for a good head to form and the aroma to be enjoyed.
 
I find that if after conditioning your homebrew at room temperature for a minimum of three weeks, if you place it in the fridge for 3 or 4 days before serving, the sediment will be a solid layer on the bottom. It is very hard to stir it up.

IMHO, all beer should poured into a glass. It allows for a good head to form and the aroma to be enjoyed.

I agree, and I also don't have a problem drinking yeast, but some people are put off by the yeast, so I try to remember to tell them how to pour unless I pour for them. Fact is, I don't get much practice, because I only know one or two people who drink good beer...
 
If you have too much yeast in your bottles then you are bottling too soon.

I secondary my weizens for the same reason...I add only enough yeast back in to make the beer cloudy again.

Patience is the key. Letting it sit an extra 2-4 weeks can't hurt a brew. ;)
 
How much $$$$ did you get for it?

:mug:

Tim

:eek:
didn't catch that...
yelcutelaughA.gif


I conditioned my beer at room temp for about a week, and then put it in my basement where it's roughly 55 degrees, so quite a bit cooler then room temp. That's probably what led to the solid settlement.
 
I've heard of epic threads, but your post on page one was also epic, Revvy. Way, way, too long to quote here so readers will just have to look on the first page to see what I'm talking about. Which they should do, anyway.
 
I have the perfect solution to the OPs question...

DONT PUT BEER IN THEM :mug:
 
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