Bottlin Barleywine

[shoestealer17]

I'm bottling my first batch or beer ever and it happens to be an English barley wine. 5 gal, about 12% abv. I've kegged about 15 batches but this is my first time bottling. After a few months in the secondary I'm going to repitch yeast and bottle with corn sugar. Do I need to bottle out of a bottling bucket? Is there anything special I should do like repitch yeast early, is there a special way I should introduce the corn sugar/water mix?
Any help would be appreciated, I would like this batch to turn out good since it will have about a year of aging invested in it.

 

[Bamsdealer]

You don't need a bottling bucket, just make sure your sugar solution gets mixed in your beer well so you end up with even carbonation. The nice thing about the bottling bucket is you can rack off the old yeast in your secondary and racking on top of your sugar solution will mix it in your beer evenly. To bottle out of the secondary you just need to get the beer in your siphon and make sure you bottle at a lower elevation than your carboy. Not sure about repitching early... I would just re-pitch when you add your corn sugar solution

 

[shoestealer17]

And would I pitch the yeast into the secondary before I racked into the bottling bucket, or should I have the yeast with the sugar water in the bottling bucket and rack on top of it?

 

[Jaybird]

You don’t "NEED" a bottling bucket. It just makes bottling easier, but I would transfer off the secondary into a clean vessel and add your yeast and priming sugar there. You will need to stir well as to get everything mixed very well. That said rehydrate your yeast so it doesn't get stuck to your stirring tool. Stir for no less than 2 min. Nice and easy! Seems like a long time to stir but you will be rewarded for the effort.

Cheers
Jay

 

[Phunhog]

Why not use one of your kegs as a bottling bucket? The advantage is you could do everything under CO2 and cut down your risk of oxidation. You can put a racking cane into a picnic tap so that it fills a bottle from the bottom and eliminates splashing. Of course you could just add your yeast and sugar directly to the keg and slowly roll the keg around to mix.

 

[shoestealer17]

That's a pretty damn good idea, I hadn't thought of that... Sounds promising

 

[Golddiggie]

Why not just keg it to carbonate and then bottle as you wish??? No need to F around with priming sugar and such either. There are several ways to bottle off of keg that you could use, giving you plenty of options. You'll also not need to worry about the ABV being too much for yeast to actually carbonate in.

I have a 12% wee heavy that will be carbonated in keg. I'm planning on bottling some from keg, but enjoying the rest off of tap.

 

[shoestealer17]

If I did that I'm wondering how I would get the pressure right without refrigerating it first. I still want to age it once I bottle it, so u dot want to get it cold firat. I'd have to carb it at like 25 psi or so at room temp, so that when it got cold it would be equal to being carbed at like 12 psi. I do this all the time with the beers I keg, I just leave the regulator set at like 12 psi when it's cold from the beer before and when I'm carbing a new beer at 68F the regulator reads around 20ish, put it in the fridge and when the temp drops the pressure reads back at 12 since the beer can absorb more CO2 at lower temperatures and the gas provides a lower pressure at lower temps. But, I can adjust any I need in a keg, once its bottled the carb level is set. Kind of a log winded explanation but I'm weary of being able to set the pressure exactly right at room temperature to get the carbonation right.

 

[thargrav]

If you decide to bottle from a keg then go ahead and carb your beer cold in the keg. Then temporarily drop the serving pressure of your cold beer down to about 3 PSI to bottle - it's almost impossible to bottle warm beer from a keg because of foaming. Once bottled, let the bottles warm up and they will all condition in the bottle.

 

[shoestealer17]

I didn't think you're suppose to get beer cold then let it warm up again, doesn't that sour the beer?

 

[Golddiggie]

I didn't think you're suppose to get beer cold then let it warm up again, doesn't that sour the beer?

No... You could get more chill haze though after you chill it again.

 

[thargrav]

Won't hurt the beer.

 

[shoestealer17]

I've herd from quite a few places that once the beer is cold it shouldn't be allowed to warm back up to room temperature. Is this not true at all?

 

[Bamsdealer]

It might impact the longevity of a store bought beer but I can't imagine it going skunk after learning about homebrew. It's common practice to cold crash then bottle condition at room temp. Also, anyone who lagers then bottle conditions is doing the same thing.

 

[thargrav]

That's a myth started by that beer company that's "brewed in the rockies".