theonetrueruss
Senior Member
Ok, so I got my belgian style bottles, corks and wire hoods. Just a couple of questions:
1) the bottles I'm using are the amber 750ml cork belgian styles from a brew store. I am assuming that they will handle 4 volumes of CO2 without a problem. Anybody have experience on this to tell me otherwise?
2) If the cork was pushed too far into the bottle so that it didn't really fill our the space in the hood am I thinking correctly that the CO2 will push the cork out into the hood? Am I missing something there? How important is the tightness of the cork against the hood at bottling time?
3)I'm planning to add yeast at bottling time since I'm looking at a 10-12% ABV (don't have a FG reading yet) and am going to secondary and crash out the worn out yeast. I want healthier yeast for conditioning as it will be aged for years. The question here is should I do a small starter for the bottling yeast or just pitch my vial in the bottle bucket as I rack into the priming sugar so it mixes well? I froze a cup of wort when I brewed for this starter but am wondering if that is a waste of time to make a starter as a vial of yeast should have way plenty for bottling.. right?
I'm just really paranoid about the whole corking process. As it is I'm probably going to rent a big corker from LHBS. just paranoid I'm going to screw it up and kill an expensive/time consuming batch. I know.. relax.. have a brew etc.
I do have supplies to cork a bottle or two before I commit by racking to my bottling bucket... but have to wait till bottling day as I won't have the corker until then. Would it be wacky if I showed up at the LHBS with a bottle and a cork and asked to try it out there a while before I was ready to bottle?
I have at least a couple of weeks to finalize my corking plans as I'm giving the beer a bit more time to settle etc. then will be cold crashing for a few days.. then allowing it to raise back to about 68deg before bottling.
1) the bottles I'm using are the amber 750ml cork belgian styles from a brew store. I am assuming that they will handle 4 volumes of CO2 without a problem. Anybody have experience on this to tell me otherwise?
2) If the cork was pushed too far into the bottle so that it didn't really fill our the space in the hood am I thinking correctly that the CO2 will push the cork out into the hood? Am I missing something there? How important is the tightness of the cork against the hood at bottling time?
3)I'm planning to add yeast at bottling time since I'm looking at a 10-12% ABV (don't have a FG reading yet) and am going to secondary and crash out the worn out yeast. I want healthier yeast for conditioning as it will be aged for years. The question here is should I do a small starter for the bottling yeast or just pitch my vial in the bottle bucket as I rack into the priming sugar so it mixes well? I froze a cup of wort when I brewed for this starter but am wondering if that is a waste of time to make a starter as a vial of yeast should have way plenty for bottling.. right?
I'm just really paranoid about the whole corking process. As it is I'm probably going to rent a big corker from LHBS. just paranoid I'm going to screw it up and kill an expensive/time consuming batch. I know.. relax.. have a brew etc.
I do have supplies to cork a bottle or two before I commit by racking to my bottling bucket... but have to wait till bottling day as I won't have the corker until then. Would it be wacky if I showed up at the LHBS with a bottle and a cork and asked to try it out there a while before I was ready to bottle?
I have at least a couple of weeks to finalize my corking plans as I'm giving the beer a bit more time to settle etc. then will be cold crashing for a few days.. then allowing it to raise back to about 68deg before bottling.