Bottle Conditioning

Am curious if many of you out there in beer land go this route, am asking because a glass carboy we have broke - not sure exactly how it got knocked over but it was perched up on a shelf in a box and it fell off, probably the damn cats...so this leads me to my current question; I am about to sample the OG readings from my brew, then I'm sort of in a pickle as to whether or not use the second bucket I have as a secondary fermenter or just go for the bottling.

Being a newcomer to the home brewing field I was thinking of not bottling right away, but then again, better off trying earlier than later in the game I guess.

Well you can't bottle condition...unless you put the beer in a bottle

Now if you wanna know if you need to use a secondary, you don't have to. Many of us leave our beer alone in primary for 3-4 weeks, then we bottle (and carb and condition for another 3 weeks minimum at 70 degrees.)

Don't let bottling scare you...read this thread. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/revvys-tips-bottler-first-time-otherwise-94812/

Cool, thanks for the thread link.

And yeah, we got all our bottles and what not, would have to start soaking them if I'd be doing this sooner than later. Obviously not today, but, yeah. hah, it's early!

So with this beer in question, a Nut Brown Ale, it says that after 5-7 days after brewing to take a hydrometer reading and record the results - making sure the readings stay the same for 2 days to know that fermentation is complete. It then says that when this happens I can either let the beer sit in the fermenter for a couple days to allow for additional settling before bottling or I can transfer to a secondary fermenter (specifically here I guess this would be the carboy, right?) or bottle immediately.

I guess I'm just curious as to whether or not jumping the gun could drastically affect the outcome of my final beer. Something I obviously wouldn't want to do. Now, I'm not sure if this recipe/set of instructions mentions the immediate bottling because of the beer in question being a Nut Brown Ale, like maybe it could actually aid in the end result of the beer. Something I should be looking into.

But when you say you let your beer sit for 3-4 weeks, is that a generality in sense? Like, for every brew you do (regardless of the type) you let it sit for additional time? My airlock isn't really bubbling anymore and I'm sorta curious about checking this reading and seeing what's happening.

Maybe I won't be able to get these solid readings for 2 days straight for another week or two, in that case the time frame would add up. It has only been a week in the primary fermenter.

Give another week in primary. Letting it sit isn't going to hurt anything. If you bottle to early you could get yourself a bunch of bottle bombs.

Most Kit recipes are written for quick turnover so you can buy more kits before you get enough info to slow down, and maybe stop buying kits and brew recipes instead..So they are not necessarily concerned with you making the best beer possible.

Even John Palmer suggests that you let kit beers sit.

Leaving an ale beer in the primary fermentor for a total of 2-3 weeks (instead of just the one week most canned kits recommend), will provide time for the conditioning reactions and improve the beer. This extra time will also let more sediment settle out before bottling, resulting in a clearer beer and easier pouring. And, three weeks in the primary fermentor is usually not enough time for off-flavors to occur.

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Except for wits, milds and hefes which traditionally are meant to be drunk young...just about every other beer will benefit from leaving it up to a month..it allows the yeasts to clean up the byproducts of fermentation, like diacetyl...there's a ton of threads on here already discussing this...but yeah I leave 99% of my beers in primary for a month..Anything else I am racking to add hops, or fruit or oaking, and I do that at about 2 weeks...after fermentation has stopped.

Don't rush your beer...it will thank you for it..

And airlocks mean nothing. Just because it's not bubbling, doesn't mean that the yeasties are done doing their work..it just means that there's not an excess of co2 needing to be vented off.

Revvy said:

Well you can't bottle condition...unless you put the beer in a bottle

Now if you wanna know if you need to use a secondary, you don't have to. Many of us leave our beer alone in primary for 3-4 weeks, then we bottle (and carb and condition for another 3 weeks minimum at 70 degrees.)

Don't let bottling scare you...read this thread. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/revvys-tips-bottler-first-time-otherwise-94812/

Click to expand...

Thanks for the tip. I read that when you first put it out. I made a bottling bucket with a spigot like the one in the pictures. It works like a champ. I bottled 54 bottles 3 weeks ago and it only took me a little over an hour. Thanks again for sharing your procedure.

Ok guys, thanks a lot for the input! I have heard the unfortunate mentioning of the bottle bombs when going in early. Something I definitely don't want happening. Am checking out that bottling thread and thanks for the input everyone - and yeah, I don't want to rush it and I'm a pretty patient person.

In terms of taking the OG readings, should I wait and maybe give that a week as well? At that point it will have been sitting in the primary for 2 weeks.

bottle bombs is such a funny term... I wonder if you purposely over primed the crap out of a few and planted them somewhere, what kinda fun you could have... then again practical jokes aren't funny if they waste beer.