Preparing for my second batch... A few questions.

Hello friends! I am preparing to brew my second batch on Saturday (it is the Power Pack Porter kit from Midwest, and I'm adding in the vanilla beans). I wanted to ask a few questions.

1) My last brew, the RedHook ESB kit from midwest, came out tasting fine (albeit a little dilluted tasting), color is fine, body is minimal as well as carbonation, but the head is minimal to nothing in most bottles. I did open one that had a decent head, but that's one out of like 20 so far. I was using mostly new bottles that I ran through the dishwasher with natural/organic dish detergent, and then ran through again before bottling for a full cycle of just water, hoping to remove any soap residue. Is it probably washing with soap that caused my problem, or are there are things I should be investigating?

2) I know some residue at the bottom of the ferment bucket is normal, but the stuff at the bottom of mine kind of looked like this: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c1/ChitlinsSmall.jpg/220px-ChitlinsSmall.jpg Except, you know, beer stuff and not soup. Is that normal? Like I said, the beer is fine, I've been drinking a bunch and sharing a bunch and everyone seems quite fine, but I just want to identify any problems I may be causing.

3) Bearing that in mind, is there some kind of filter I can get for when I am siphoning into the bottling bucket? I felt like I had to leave a lot of beer behind so that I didn't suck up any of the residue.

Thanks in advance!

It would be my opinion that your problem is most likely soap residue. The soap can be in your bottles and also in your glasses.

Dishwashers in my opinion are hit and miss for cleaning and rinsing beer bottles. The diswasher was designed to clean and rinse dishes which are basically wide open compared to the narrow mouth and wider body of the bottle. A jet washer attached directly to the kitchen faucet works well for rinsing the inside of the bottle. Can also be attached with a short hose so no hand pressure is applied directly to the faucet.

Trub can look very sinister until you taste the results. Then it starts looking rather nice.

There are commercial filters. Typically used with CO2 pressure or from large tanks which create their own pressure from gravity flow.

In homebrewing the best is to let the beer primary long enough for the yeast cake and trub to compact. Start your syphon well above the cake. Towards the bottom just gradually lower the siphon until it nears the top yeast layer.
I tilt my carboy to decrease the surface area. Might leave six ounces of beer. I'll leave more if I'm going to harvest the yeast.

Aha, I'm brewing Midwest's RedHook ESB as we speak. Well, fermenting. Brew day was Sunday. It's my second brew attempt.

My first attempt was a TrueBrew IPA (which was nothing like an IPA, but I digress...), and it turned out my carbonation was mostly fine but some bottles were extremely carbonated. I felt fortunate not to have any bottle bombs! A couple were notably undercarbonated, but thankfully the vast majority gave a pretty good head with nice retention. Anyway, I think my issue was a lack of uniformity in the priming sugar solution's distribution. I tried to rack with the hose totally submerged in the solution from the start, but either I did it wrong or the method is a little faulty.

That's what I think my problem was, anyway. Yours is probably the dishwasher detergent. I would think you shouldn't use any. If you need to clean (not sanitize, but clean) your bottles, you should soak them in Oxiclean or B-Brite (I think that's what it's called) or something similar. Use a bottle brush if there's stuff really caked in there. If the bottles aren't sticky or visibly dirty, you probably just need to sanitize. In which case the dishwasher would be fine, assuming it has a hot enough setting for sanitizing (just run it without soap). Otherwise, you could use StarSan, which is a no-rinse sanitizer.

Good luck! Hope my ESB carbs up better than yours! And I hope your next batch does too! :fro:

I saw on another forum that people recommend gently stirring the priming solution into the beer after racking to the bottling bucket (taking care not to splash/oxidize). I will do this next time, and hopefully get a more uniform carbonation.

My RedHook ESB is still bubbling away.

deBrouwer said:

I saw on another forum that people recommend gently stirring the priming solution into the beer after racking to the bottling bucket (taking care not to splash/oxidize). I will do this next time, and hopefully get a more uniform carbonation.

My RedHook ESB is still bubbling away.

Click to expand...

Don't stir it. Just add the priming solution to the bucket first, then rack the beer into the bucket. Lay the end of the tube in a half on the bottom of the bucket, and that will slowly spin the beer as it's added. That will mix everything together with no issues. I angle the bucket a bit to have more priming solution where the beer exits the tube at the start, and then set it back to flat once a few inches are in the bucket. You must have done something wrong the last time. Maybe you just need to slow down the next time...

Easiest way to do it!!!

flars said:

Trub can look very sinister until you taste the results. Then it starts looking rather nice.

...

In homebrewing the best is to let the beer primary long enough for the yeast cake and trub to compact. Start your syphon well above the cake. Towards the bottom just gradually lower the siphon until it nears the top yeast layer.
I tilt my carboy to decrease the surface area. Might leave six ounces of beer. I'll leave more if I'm going to harvest the yeast.

Click to expand...

Thank you! I did those things, it was just that the gunk was floating so loosely in the fermenting bucket that I wasn't sure if that was normal or not.

I will be sure to rinse well this time with just water.

deBrouwer said:

Yours is probably the dishwasher detergent. I would think you shouldn't use any. If you need to clean (not sanitize, but clean) your bottles, you should soak them in Oxiclean or B-Brite (I think that's what it's called) or something similar. Use a bottle brush if there's stuff really caked in there. If the bottles aren't sticky or visibly dirty, you probably just need to sanitize. In which case the dishwasher would be fine, assuming it has a hot enough setting for sanitizing (just run it without soap). Otherwise, you could use StarSan, which is a no-rinse sanitizer.

Good luck! Hope my ESB carbs up better than yours! And I hope your next batch does too! :fro:

Click to expand...

Thank you, I hope yours turns out splendidly!

k1ngl1ves said:

Don't stir it. Just add the priming solution to the bucket first, then rack the beer into the bucket. Lay the end of the tube in a half on the bottom of the bucket, and that will slowly spin the beer as it's added. That will mix everything together with no issues. I angle the bucket a bit to have more priming solution where the beer exits the tube at the start, and then set it back to flat once a few inches are in the bucket. You must have done something wrong the last time. Maybe you just need to slow down the next time...

Easiest way to do it!!!

Click to expand...

Other than tilting, that's what I tried to do, and thought I did successfully.

Guess I'll see what happens. Maybe two times is a charm.