Mothman
Well-Known Member
Well, what a disappointing end to my first batch of homebrew..
After my first brew went through brew day and fermentation (for 2.5 weeks) very well, bottling tonight was a total flop.
All was going well to start, until I got about half of the beer into the bottling bucket, at which point the siphon started bubbling like crazy, and I lost siphon. Tried several times with the auto-siphon to get it started again, and it just wouldn't go, and I introduced a lot of air bubbles.
Try as I might, I just couldn't get it to siphon, so I eventually committed the cardinal sin of just using the cane (out of the auto siphon) and sucking to start the siphon. I siphoned the first bit into my 5 gallon sanitizer bucket, sticking the end into the solution and sloshing it around, then back to the bottling bucket. Got a bit more siphoned, then the siphon failed again, full of air bubbles, then stopped completely.
In the mean time, I'd had my hands all over the damn siphon hose end that was now in the beer as well, although hopefully my hands were fairly well sanitized, as I'd had them in the starsan a lot, including as I was trying to sanitize the siphon hose after having my dumb old mouth on it.
I think the problem was that I accidentally put the siphon too low in the primary, and it sucked up a bunch of the hop debris, of which there was a ton, and it blocked up the siphoning cane.
In the end I gave up trying to get more into the bottling bucket, leaving behind a little more than a gallon of trub/beer, where I was guessing I might end up leaving behind 0.25-0.5 gallons. Seeing as I only had a little under 3.5 gallons in the primary, that lost gallon hurt.
So I bottled what I had, and that part went pretty smoothly, using a bottling wand on a spigot. The spigot leaked around the washer a bit, but that's OK... overall, the actual bottling was a breeze.
But... and it's a huge freaking disappointing BUT... I ended up, after being so damn careful for the last 2.5 weeks, with likely a bunch of oxidation potential, potential for infection, and because I had batch primed for a little over 3 gallons of beer but only managed to get about 2.2 gallons, I'm afraid I've badly over-carbonated and will have grenades instead of drinkable beer.
Any suggestions for me?
Specifically:
- re: the carbonation, should I be popping the caps after a week and then recapping, or something, to try to avoid bottle bombs?
- for my next batch, being as it's in a plastic bucket and I can't see the trub layer, how do I do a better job of siphoning without clogging up the works by sucking up debris? Just be more careful and try to keep the siphon just below the surface?
After my first brew went through brew day and fermentation (for 2.5 weeks) very well, bottling tonight was a total flop.
All was going well to start, until I got about half of the beer into the bottling bucket, at which point the siphon started bubbling like crazy, and I lost siphon. Tried several times with the auto-siphon to get it started again, and it just wouldn't go, and I introduced a lot of air bubbles.
Try as I might, I just couldn't get it to siphon, so I eventually committed the cardinal sin of just using the cane (out of the auto siphon) and sucking to start the siphon. I siphoned the first bit into my 5 gallon sanitizer bucket, sticking the end into the solution and sloshing it around, then back to the bottling bucket. Got a bit more siphoned, then the siphon failed again, full of air bubbles, then stopped completely.
In the mean time, I'd had my hands all over the damn siphon hose end that was now in the beer as well, although hopefully my hands were fairly well sanitized, as I'd had them in the starsan a lot, including as I was trying to sanitize the siphon hose after having my dumb old mouth on it.
I think the problem was that I accidentally put the siphon too low in the primary, and it sucked up a bunch of the hop debris, of which there was a ton, and it blocked up the siphoning cane.
In the end I gave up trying to get more into the bottling bucket, leaving behind a little more than a gallon of trub/beer, where I was guessing I might end up leaving behind 0.25-0.5 gallons. Seeing as I only had a little under 3.5 gallons in the primary, that lost gallon hurt.
So I bottled what I had, and that part went pretty smoothly, using a bottling wand on a spigot. The spigot leaked around the washer a bit, but that's OK... overall, the actual bottling was a breeze.
But... and it's a huge freaking disappointing BUT... I ended up, after being so damn careful for the last 2.5 weeks, with likely a bunch of oxidation potential, potential for infection, and because I had batch primed for a little over 3 gallons of beer but only managed to get about 2.2 gallons, I'm afraid I've badly over-carbonated and will have grenades instead of drinkable beer.
Any suggestions for me?
Specifically:
- re: the carbonation, should I be popping the caps after a week and then recapping, or something, to try to avoid bottle bombs?
- for my next batch, being as it's in a plastic bucket and I can't see the trub layer, how do I do a better job of siphoning without clogging up the works by sucking up debris? Just be more careful and try to keep the siphon just below the surface?