Add 5 oz of dextrose to almost finished APA

[dgr]

I took a looong hiatus from home brewing and am now back into it. About time I jumped in and got my panties wet here. In all the different hobbies I have, this has to be one of , if not, the best forums I've joined. So much positive attitude here. It must be the home brew.

I was going to bottle my morebeer extract APA2 tonight. It had fermented for 11 days. 5 oz of sugar boiled and put into the bottom of the bottling bucket. As I was siphoning from my brew bucket to the bottling bucket, I decided that I wasn't happy with the suspended hop pellet material. Back into a sanitized brew bucket it went as I know I'm not going to be happy seeing a piece of hop pellet floating around in my ale.

Question is, how long for those 5 oz of dextrose to ferment out before I can even think about going back to bottling? I can take hydrometer readings every day or so but it's 0.0023 points and it's tough to see .002 points on my hydrometer. I'm going to enjoy a sculpin IPA or 3 while I'm waiting but am ready to get on to bottling.

Thank you for any thoughts on this.

 

[Trail]

Three things come to mind:

1) You just need the hydro to stay the same for three days. Related, I doubt bottling quantities of sugar will be reflected in your gravity to the extent you can measure it precisely, so just wait three days.
2) Oof. Guessing it's not on the original yeast cake anymore - that's where most of the clarifying and flavor-enhancing processes happen in a young beer, so further conditioning will be reduced in effectiveness. In the future, try to give your beer a month or more to condition for best results.
3) It's still likely to be delicious.

 

[unionrdr]

This is one of the reasons I pour my chilled wort through a fine mesh strainer into my fermenters. Get all that extranious grainy gunk out. No floaters that way. You could tie a hop sack over the end of your autosiphon/racking cain to keep the floaters out. And it'll take a few days for that sugar to ferment out with what yeast cells are left in suspension.

 

[dgr]

Thank you for the replies. Kerin, unfortunately the yeast cake is gone. I will give it at least 3 days. The bucket lids leak enough that slow fermentation doesn't show in the airlock so it's wait and see. And you're right, it is already delicious. Just chunkier than I wanted it.

uniondr, funny you mention that. I plugged my siphon while trying to get the cooled wort into my bucket. I gave up on that, threw a sanitized 5 gallon paint bag in the bucket, poured the wort and then pulled the bag out. Quite a bit hot/cold break and hop particles still got through. I'll hop sack the next rack to my bottle bucket now that most of the floaters have been sent down the drain.

 

[jfk69]

This is one of the reasons I pour my chilled wort through a fine mesh strainer into my fermenters. Get all that extranious grainy gunk out. No floaters that way. You could tie a hop sack over the end of your autosiphon/racking cain to keep the floaters out. And it'll take a few days for that sugar to ferment out with what yeast cells are left in suspension.

This. I bought the strainer for my first batch since I added 6 ounces of pelleted hops to the boil, and I won't go back. The strainer REALLY cleans up the amount of trub and floaters in the fermenter, making racking to the bottling bucket a much better experience.

 

[unionrdr]

Yeah,i got the dual layer fine mesh strainer from midwest,but Northern Brewer has the same one. Props over the top of plastic ale pails & Cooper's fermenters. Quick & easy. It's stainless steel,so easy to clean. Those paint strainer bags can be course mesh,or fine mesh. Course mesh is the most common. The dual layer fine mesh strainer def works better.

 

[dgr]

uniondr,
A couple of reviews over at northern brewer suggest the strainer doesn't catch all the pellet hop particles. What's your experience with it? I'm thinking of trying some voile like the BIAB guys use.

Three days in "secondary" dropped everything out of this beer

 

[unionrdr]

I don't secondary,as many folks do now. And that dual layer fine mesh strainer gets out all but the very fine floury/silty stuff. you def are not going to get floaters through the strainer. That's def BS. Trust me,I've been using it for some time now,& only the finest,tiniest silt gets through. Like the floury part of crushed grains & such. But that settles out in the trub layer,leaving a yeast/trub layer 3/8-1/2" deep on average in my primaries. And all the trub settles out easilly when yeast washing. See my article on "easy yeast washing" for examples.

 

[kh54s10]

I don't strain, I don't secondary. I leave the beer in primary long enough to clear up. I then siphon carefully to my bottling bucket. By the time it is empty anything still there has settled to the bottom. If anything gets into the bottles it settles there, so I never see anything floating in my glass.

 

[unionrdr]

Well,before I started straining I got a floater now & then. so te strainer gives less compacted trub & more clear beer for me. & no floaters. that's the op's concern with the strainer bag he used. Course mesh doesn't work well in this regard.