Improvised Airlock & Carbonation Question

[dolan]

Hey all,

I've posted here a couple of times with my newbie questions and have received a great amount of help. I'm here with a few more.

I just started a 1 gallon batch of Irish Stout. For the first three days I had some tubing stretched from my cork stopper into a half-full glass of water to deal with any "blowback". After day three, I went to replace the tubing with an airlock to continue fermentation - only to notice that I'm missing the center part of my three-piece airlock. My question is, should I buy a new airlock ASAP, or can I just leave the tubing in the water and have it function in the same way? (As far as I can tell they serve the same purpose)

Now for my next questions. During my last batch of brew I had quite a few problems, one of them was carbonation. I had tried mixing in some sugar and hot water after moving it from the primary fermenter to some bottles but it never seemed to carbonate. I recently bought some brewing carbonation tablets meant to be used in bottling, but unfortunately all of my bottles were broken in a recent move. (Although I realize now I should have boiled and mixed the sugar before adding it, which may have been the problem)

I was planning to use a 1 gallon glass carboy to store the brew instead of buying more bottles, is it alright for me to carbonate my brew in the carboy, acting as one giant bottle? If so, would you recommend I still give the carbonation tablets a go, or use the sucrose method? If you think I should give the tablets a try, how many should I use? The bag says 1 per 375ml, which would be about 10 tablets for the whole gallon.

Thanks for helping me out yet again,

Dolan

 

[Husher]

Howdy

First Question - if you have a blowoff tube set up, it's your airlock. The only reason you'd need to replace it is to prevent draw back. Fer instances, if there's a drop in temp, the gas in the carboy contracts and sucks contaminated water into the fermenter. I keep my brew in the carboy for months so if it was me I'd replace. However I understand other take much less time (2 weeks?) And if that's the case (and you don't imagine a temp drop), then I guess you could get away with just keeping the blow off. If you could replace the blowoff water with starsan, but that's kinda a waste of starsan.

As fer carbonation, don't really understand the problem. Are you adding disolved sugar to a bottling bucket and letting it mix to the entire batch and then bottling? I'm unclear on your process.

And no you cannot carbonate in a carboy. If you do, what you're really doing is making a time bomb without a timer.

 

[dolan]

Thanks for the quick reply Husher!

That confirmed my thoughts on the blow-off tube. Unfortunately it's starting into the time of year where we start to see temperature drops in my area, so it looks as if I'll have to quit being so cheap and just buy a new airlock. It would seem as though I need to purchase some bottles too so I can just do that at the same time.

You are correct about my previous process - I had added the dissolved sugar to the batch while it was in the fermenter and then bottled it. This time I might just try adding the carbonation tablets to the bottles themselves.

As for the carboy - could you humor me and explain why carbonating in the carboy is bad? In my mind it's basically just one big bottle, and I assumed since you can carbonate in the bottles it would work just fine in the carboy. Is it simply too much pressure for a larger volume?

 

[Sailingeric]

Beer bottles can handle more pressure than the carboy. A bottle bomb is messy and loud, I could not imagine what a carboy would do if it blew. Plus the bottles will be capped to hold the pressure in.

 

[dolan]

Strange, I would have figured the big carboy would be stronger, but I suppose they're not really made with o2 pressure in mind are they? The cap sealing thing makes a lot of sense though. I've decided to buy some bottles & try out the carbonation tablets I bought. Would welcome any other comments, but thanks so much for your contributions!

 

[Husher]

Sailingeric is right, carboys are not designed to be under pressure at any time. Though the glass may appear thick in some places (like at the base or neck) it is much much thinner on the sides. I know cus I've broken one by accidentally tapping one into another.

My process for bottling is to transfer from the carboy to a bottling bucket with spigot and pour in the liquefied sugar early in the transfer so that the siphon action does the mixing for me. Sounds to me like you are bottling via a siphon straight from your carboy. If that's the case, you might be...

1) Shocking the yeast by adding hot liquid sugar to a small 1 gallon batch.

2) Not adding enough sugar? I do 3/4 cup per 6 Gallons.

3) Not waiting long enough? Some beers can take a month or 2 to fully carbonate. With a 1 gallon batch, that's what, 7-8 beers?

Honestly each of these answers seems weak but I have no idea what else it could be. I have difficulty getting apple wine to carbonate, but that has more to do with less protein (or something) in applewine.

 

[dolan]

To be honest it could really be any number of things. I screwed up a lot with my first batch and was very inpatient to try it. I'm going to try bottling with the carbonation tablets this time and let them sit for a month or two as you suggested. I know I've gotten at least one good thing out of this - I avoided making a carboy bomb!

 

[Husher]

I should note that ageing beer in the carboy isn't required and not a factor in carbonation. Mostly it's so the yeast cake can clean up any off flavours. But honestly I'm not sure if it makes a difference. It just doesn't hurt.

 

[Husher]

oh I read that wrong. Yeah 2 months in the bottle is maximum carbonation. Won't get any better than that.