Just transferred into carboy (with pictures)

Hey everyone,

I just transferred from my primary to the carboy and added water to about 2 inches below the rubber part of the air lock like it said in the instructions. Can anyone let me know if it looks okay? It's a pale ale and I transferred it at a gravity of 1.014 because the instructions said you could if it's 1.020 or less. Thanks for your responses!

 

Never heard of that before. How much water did you add to the secondary? Boiled and chilled first? What style of beer is it?

 

It just says add cool clean water so I did. Canadian pale ale

 

I read it as added water to the beer at first- but do you mean added water to the beer itself, or to the bubbler airlock?

 

I also have not heard of adding water to have a certain height in the fermenter. It could be ok, if you are using the right sized fermenter or bad if you are using too big a fermenter.

The instructions about transferring at 1.020 are not the best. It is best to transfer when your fermentation is done. Take a gravity reading about 3-5 days after you no longer see any activity, wait another 24 hours and take a reading. If they are the same you can transfer.

Or simpler. Ferment in primary for 2-4 weeks, check gravity and clarity. If done and clear - go straight to bottling.

I rarely do a secondary unless it is a big beer that will be aging for a month or longer. (or adding something like fruit or dry hops) though I dry hop in primary also.

But, it looks good. If you didn't water it down too much it should be good.

 

I have never heard of topping off after transferring either. All you are doing at the point is lowering the ABV for the trade of having more beer. That aside it looks fine and should be fine unless you were particularly unsanitary. For future brews in beers where you are not adding something during secondary (fruit, wood, hops, etc...) there is really no reason to secondary. Just ferment for 2-3weeks in primary or until your FG is steady for a couple of days then rack to your bottling bucket.

If you are thinking you'll get hooked on brewing I would definitely suggest buying "How to Brew" by John Palmer 3rd edition. You can read the first edition online for free here: http://www.howtobrew.com/intro.html The online version is slightly out of date with current practices. And I find myself pretty regularly taking notes and checking things in the hardcopy.

 

Sounds like he topped of the secondary after transfer from his primary. (To minimize head space?) Good or bad really depends on how much was added and if it was boiled first. Either way it will have to thin the beer.

 

the topping with water thing is something that came from wine making. in theory, it's to get rid of headspace, and thus oxygen, for wines that will be bulk conditioning for a long time.

OP: looks just fine, and as long as the equipment you used to get the water in there (funnel, pot, etc) was clean and sanitary, it should be great. just a bit lower abv. in the future, you don't need to top with water

edit: aha! unless the kit intentionally has you do primary fermentation with less volume to mitigate the risk of a blow off. in which case I would brew different kits and/or get a larger primary vessel.

 

Danath34- the AHA was what I was thinking too. It seems weird the instructions would do that though. The beer looks ok, but in fear it may be watered down as well.

I would be investing in a bigger carboy as to not have to worry in the future...

Let it go, worst case you have a low AVB session beer. Relax, don't worry, and have a homebrew. Saying something like "Bad Beer" is like saying "bad chocolate chip cookies" there may be less than great of each but very seldom is either ever truly "bad".

 

Continuity would have been better if this post were in your previous thread. Readers could then follow the first replies.

If you boiled the water to eliminate the oxygen, and it wasn't treated water, added the water without splashing you are probably safe. Just lower ABV, body, and taste. Keep the fermentor at room temperature to give the remaining yeast the best chance to finish the fermentation.

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/adding-water-carboy-479158/#post6193578

 

It looks fine, just needs some time to clarify, but in the future, I would be hesitant to add any water after primary fermentation unless I had a really good reason.

It sounds like the reason was to minimize headspace to prevent oxidation. As has been pointed out, this is a carryover from wine-making that really shouldn't be used in beer brewing. It makes for thinner, less tasty beer.

In the future, I would refrain from topping up with water, and just be really careful not to oxidate the beer when transferring to secondary.... or better yet, just skip the secondary altogether, and leave it in the primary longer until you're ready to bottle.

 

Water in secondary to eliminate headspace? What silly instructions are you reading?
What is done is done. You made beer which is awesome. You also probably have some thin watered down beer, which may still be awesome.

 

Percentage wise what do you think it'll be. When I checked with the hydrometer it said 4.8% before I added in the water

 

Difficult to say, without knowing how much water was added, and what the volume was before you added the water.

The safe answer is "lower".

 

On the rare occasions that I use a secondary, I'll add a small amount of priming sugar solution to the secondary and let the yeast generate CO2 to displace the air in the headspace.

 

Please tell us who made these instructions so we can hunt them down and slap them repeatedly.

A few things:

1) Don't use those solid bungs. They're awful and they fall into the carboys way too often. Go and get some universal bungs. They're much better.
2) Calibrate all of your carboys. Take a piece of duck tape and tape it vertically on your carboy the next time it's empty. Pour a measured gallon of water into the carboy. Take a sharpie marker and place a mark at the one gallon mark. Keep doing this until you get to the four gallon mark. Then start adding in quarter gallons and mark quarter-gallon increments until you get to 5.5 gallons. For the 6.5 gallon carboys, do gallon marks from gallons 1-5 and then quarter-gallon marks from 5.25 to 6.5. The duck tape won't last forever, but it will last you a year at least. You can go to Brewhardware.com and order some nice yinyl labels to make your carboys better later.
3) Drink this beer fast, because it's going to taste oxidated soon. You shouldn't ever add water to an already fermented beer. Again, please let us know who made these instructions so we can slap them many times.

 

Barons

 

You sir are going to have a sticky carpet.

 

As this is secondary, I really don't think so, unless I'm misunderstanding something

 

Okay, I now see that this beer kit is the "don't bother boiling anything, just dump the ingredients into the carboy with some warm water and you'll be fine" kind of beer kit. Which is fine for beginners. Just don't expect any wonderful beer from this type of kit.

They really should not tell anybody to add water after fermentation, and they also should NOT be telling people to begin dry-hopping on day 1 of fermentation.

There's a lot of bad advice in these instructions.

 

Holy Crap those instructions are 12 years old!

 

Infected?

 

No, it doesn't look infected.

 

Thank you!

 

Nope, you understand correctly, I was lazy and didn't read the whole thread