A Couple Questions For My First Time Bottling

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thewarmachine

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I am going to bottle either tonight or tomorrow morning and I have a few questions:

1) My beer has been in the fermentor for a couple weeks longer than I had intended, because of scheduling issues. Will that be a problem and if so do I need to change how much sugar I add or anything?

2) I have seen people say that it is good to transfer into the bottling bucket the day before bottling so that the junk has time to settle in the bottom. Seems to me like I would want to use a strainer to transfer into the bottling bucket so that there is not junk in the first place. What do you recommend?

3) Lastly, what kind of sugar do I need to use? Is just the normal sugar we have in the kitchen for cooking fine or do I need a different kind?

Thanks so much for your help!
 
Just my thoughs....

1) No
2) Transfer when ready to bottle. Siphon only, slowly and quietly, no strainer. Splashing will create O2 in your beer causing oxidation. Beer will taste like cardboard.
3) Cane sugar will work fine.

Use the search feature, you will find lots of info on how much to use.
 
Just my thoughs....
2) Transfer when ready to bottle. Siphon only, slowly and quietly, no strainer. Splashing will create O2 in your beer causing oxidation. Beer will taste like cardboard.

So when I transfer it to the bottling bucket I don't have to worry about the junk at the bottom tranferring through the tube?
 
So when I transfer it to the bottling bucket I don't have to worry about the junk at the bottom tranferring through the tube?

You do need to worry about it -- if you put your auto-siphon (if thats what you use) too far into the carboy, you'll suck up all that junk in the bottom which is not ideal. You want to get all the nice clear liquid but leave the trash at the bottom -- and it's OK to leave some liquid in the bottom; this is why most 5 gallon recipes actually use 5.25 gallons since you'll naturally lose some liquid in the racking process.
 
I don't even know what an auto-siphon is, haha. I'm brand new to this.
I just have a bucket with a spicket and then a tube that attaches. Thank you so much for the tips!
 
I don't even know what an auto-siphon is, haha. I'm brand new to this.
I just have a bucket with a spicket and then a tube that attaches. Thank you so much for the tips!

So you've fermented in your bottling bucket? If that's the case, just be very very gentle mixing in your priming solution and try to leave that bottom layer of yeast and trub completely alone. That stuff should be below the level of your spigot and you should be able to fill the vast majority of your bottles without affecting that layer of stuff. You might consider getting a plain old bucket to ferment in and buying a siphon of some sort to move the beer from the fermenting bucket to the bottling bucket, which will make mixing in the priming solution a little easier because you can just put it at the bottom of the bottling bucket and siphon your beer on top of it, which does a pretty good job of mixing it in through the whole batch and allows you to leave all of the yeast and trub in fermenting bucket.
 
TTB-J, the quote that you used from me was only referring to my bottling equipment. I have ben fermenting in a separate fermentor and was asking the best way to transfer it to the bottling bucket. Thanks for your tips though.
 
I'm an idiot. I just now realized that the bucket that I need to transfer from does not have a spigot. So would my best bet for transferring be to very carefully pour it from the fermenting bucket into the bottling bucket?
 
What you should do is put your racking cane (L shaped piece of plastic with black tip) just above the trub and then slowly siphon the beer out of the fermenter on top of your priming solution.
 
What you should do is put your racking cane (L shaped piece of plastic with black tip) just above the trub and then slowly siphon the beer out of the fermenter on top of your priming solution.

Kaiborg, I'm having a hard time picturing what you are describing. Not sure what the trub is, or how I would siphon out of the bucket that doesn't have a spigot.
 
You just put the plastic tubing slightly above the bottom of your fermenting bucket, you open the lid on the bucket, put the tube in...place your sugar in the bottom of the bottling bucket (The one with the spigot) And siphon from the bucket to the bottling bucket...Top of the bucket to top of the bottling bucket
 
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