Holy cow! What a learning experience.

[thirstymug]

What’s up guys. Man I just kegged/bottled up my 1st batch of beer ever and what a cluster _______ lol I got messed up at almost every turn and just wanted to share with the rest of you.

Jeeze where to start, I guess this was the first time I tried to siphon beer... I did bottle 1 batch of wine but I fermented it in a bucket with a spigot attached. Well it took me a couple of tries to figure out that the bottling wand doesn’t work with a racking cane(doh!) Ditched the wand only to see my siphon hose sucking air where the tubing fitted to it (Doh). This was going pretty bad and I really wanted to bottle up a 6 pack plus my beer was getting aerated by the air leak in my cane. I decided to put some zip ties on the tube and rack of to my bottling bucket so that I could get back on track with the bottling.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I had my fermenting bucket in a swamp cooler (which worked great during fermentation), well guess what started floating around in the swamp cooler as the level of beer dropped?? (Doh!!). Man I cant believe I didn’t think to drain the cooling water off lol. So I grabbed my floating fermentor and lifted it out to set on a nearby table and dripped swamp cooler water in the beer! (head slap+doh!)

Ugg Finally got the beer into the bottling bucket and things went a bit better after that. Got my six bottles capped up and the keg sitting in the fridge.

Oh yeah and another cool move I made was that I took my OG reading from my partial boil before I topped off with water lol! what a mess. Final reading was 1.012 though.

One cool thing I came up with though is this. I ended up with about a beer or so worth of flat beer from trying to get the siphon going. to save it I fill my beer glass a bit more than half way with my flat beer and then top off with some red stripe I got on sale this week to carb it up. Tastes pretty good!

Sorry for the long rant and I'm sure I missed even more mess ups trying to get this beer out of the fermenter, but I think you guys get the picture! One thing is certain when I order my next kit Im also going to pick up a frigging auto siphon.

Anyway that’s some of the story of my first homebrew which by the way is a morebeer Dunkelweizen extract kit that I fermented for 3 weeks at 66-68 F.

Next up is a Amber light ale kit that I might bump up with a pound of local honey.

 

[Seven]

Siphoning definitely takes a bit of practice. Try practicing with water a few times until you're comfortable with the process. That way next time you need to siphon precious beer you'll be a siphon master!

Congrats on your first batch.

 

[LimerickBrewCo]

Some practice with a regular siphon would help but an autosiphon does make things a lot easier/

 

[grimzella]

Some practice with a regular siphon would help but an autosiphon does make things a lot easier/

this, and they dont cost all that much $$

 

[bighorn_brew]

Shoulda went all in the keg, then before throwing the co2 on it it bottle a few bottles off the picnic tap, you can attach a bottling wand in the picnic tap I believe, or cut a piece of tubing to fit over the tap....and use carbing drops or whatever you used for your six bottles.

 

[Draken]

Oh yeah and another cool move I made was that I took my OG reading from my partial boil before I topped off with water lol! what a mess. Final reading was 1.012 though.

So take the OG reading you got and do this:
Ex
Post partial boil quantity: 3.5 gallons
Post partial boil OG: 1.090
Water added: 1.5 gallons

Take the last three numbers of the OG times the post partial boil quantity:
90*3.5=315
Now take that result and divide itr by the total volume: Water added and post partial boil quantity:
315/5=63
So your OG in that case would be 1.063

Edit to correct the equations

 

[thirstymug]

Thanks for the replies guys. I think I have my siphon problem fixed for now. I slapped a hose clamp on it to stop the air leak.

Shoulda went all in the keg, then before throwing the co2 on it it bottle a few bottles off the picnic tap, you can attach a bottling wand in the picnic tap I believe, or cut a piece of tubing to fit over the tap....and use carbing drops or whatever you used for your six bottles.

I think thats the way I'll go next time, I have some extra beer side connectors so I think I'll rig a permanent bottling setup. I'll get it figured out for the next batch.

So take the OG reading you got and do this:
Ex
Post partial boil quantity: 3.5 gallons
Post partial boil OG: 1.090
Water added: 1.5 gallons

Take the last three numbers of the OG times the post partial boil quantity:
90*2.5=315
Now take that result and divide itr by the total volume: Water added and post partial boil quantity:
225/5 = 63
So your OG in that case would be 1.063

Awesome. Man another lesson learned (keep better notes) If i remember right, using your formula gives me 104*2.5=260. 260/5=52 for a OG of 1.052. That seems right to me. Thanks for the help bro.