Hey folks. Hope your having a great day. I bottled my first batch of beer last night and while it may not be the best when it comes out of the bottle in a few weeks, I made it and the left over from the bottling bucket last night at least looked, smelled and tasted like beer. One thing I found a comment about the other day raised a question in my mind about how to store while waiting for that few weeks to pass.
I had read in a beer book, can't remember which, that after bottling it was a good idea to lay them flat rather than than upright in order for the beer to carbonate better/ more evenly. Anyone ever do that and would you agree or disagree or does it matter? Thanks!
no, not a good idea. If you do that you will have a line of yeast from top to bottom on one side of the bottle, and it will settle there and pour cloudy.
All you need for even carbonation is to have patience...
read this, .
Just follow the directions on bulk priming for bottling, bottle, then leave them in a warm place for a minimum of 3 weeks.
people come up with all sorts of cockamamy ideas based on the simple fact that their beers weren't carbonated when the checked on them, probably at 2 weeks, then they laid them on the side, and maybe waited a week.. then they call that the reason it carbed, not the mere fact that it would have been carbed in another week. This idea was probably a bastardization of the idea of the bottles have been kept LESS than 70 degrees like in a 50 something degree basement and we suggest the lay the bottles on the side
and roll them back and forth a few times before laying them back upright and leaving them alone for the yeast to wake up. Or an observation of wine bottles laying on their side (which is to keep the natural corks wet...
I bottled for 7 years before kegging, and I still bottle on occasions, and I NEVER have had ANY of the problems that nearly EVERY bottling problem thread claims to have... never had "uneven" carbonation (and I've never stirred the priming sugar a day in my life) and except for my 19.75% abv 5 year aged barleywine (which we DID add fresh yeast to but at nearly 20% the yeast died) and NEVER had a beer batch that didn't carb eventually...whether it was 3 weeks or 6 months on big beers.
All I do when I bottle is as outlined in my sticky....nothing fancy...
It's not complicated....you boil your sugar, you mix it (in some way either by stirring if you feel the need or letting in NATURALLY integrate by putting it in the bottom of the bucket and racking on top) You bottle your beer...you make sure the temp of the place where your beers are is above 70 degrees if you have normal grav beers and want it to take around 3 weeks... And you Wait til they're carbed...however long that takes.
If it's a big beer, or maybe if you bulk aged it for 6 months or a couple years you consider add some fresh yeast at bottling....
But everything else, whether you chill the solution after boiling or not, whether you have a dip tube or not, any of those other things that people over analyze is superfluous.....
I made that thread, that became the sticky to help explain to people that it ain't rocket science, it's not a difficult process to do, and the reason people have problems with bottling is NOT bottling itself, it's usually their own impatience.... if they follow the simplest process.... boil sugar- add to beer- bottle- WAIT, then they'll have perfectly carbed beer IN ALL THE BOTTLES....
It's that simple... You don't need to do any tricks, cast any spells, lay them on the side... just need to be patient and let the same natural process that millions of bottles of beer have carbed by happen.
It's NOT a complex or complicated process....what makes it seems so, that it requires magic or superstition of some sort is because PEOPLE COMPLICATE IT, by simply not waiting.
