Bottling from LBK

[olotti]

So this is my first batch ever so I used the Mr. Beer kits my wife had around, ordered a Black Forest stout that had pureed raspberries in it. My question is when I got down to the last approx 3 bottles worth of beer in the keg the tap kept clogging due to the sediment and puree. Is it even possible to get all the beer out of the tap with all the sediment? How do you guys do it?. I will say I had a funnel and strainer so I dunked those in the sanitizer along with a ladle and tried that route to fill the last 3 bottles. It worked for the most part but I had to keep rinsing off the strainer because of all the sediment and gunk.

On another note the second batch is a Hefe with a bag of hops. Do I pull the bag out before bottling? How do I avoid that getting caught in the tap and clogging things up?

Thanks for the much needed input.

 

[BigJack]

For a beer with that much sediment, you are going to lose some beer to sediment. That's the price you pay for adding fruit to the fermenter.

Most lbk owners figure out how to goose their recipes a hair and slightly overfill the lbk to hit our desired amount of finished beer- but if you leave too little head space you will get a messy fermentation pushing through the vents in the lid. The top of the Q in the word quart on the back of the Mr Beer fermenter is 2.5 gallons. Don't go over that line. On high alcohol batches, don't even go that high up.

 

[olotti]

Anyone else have any thoughts??

 

[JayDubWill]

I use a mini auto siphon on my LBK's. I've got 4 but am switching over to 6gal better bottles as money permits. I'm tired of splitting my dry hop additions between two LBK's since I now do 5gal all grain batches exclusively. And yes, filling to the top of Q will get you 2.5gal, but I almost always end up with krausen spilling out the lid vents which ends up pretty moldy after a few weeks even after cleaning up with a starsan soaked paper towel.

 

[bobot]

I bottled an experimental LBK batch yesterday. After pitching, I questioned myself about if I had sanitized the spigot or not. I probably did, but I wasn't certain. So I resolved to rack it to my bottling bucket, and bottle from there.
I dry hopped with an ounce of pellet hops 5 days prior to bottling. I ended up racking quite a bit of hop particulate matter, which doesn't bother me, but my bottling wand was not a fan. The auto-shutoff valve kept clogging, and drizzling beer while I reached for a new bottle.
I am brewing another LBK experiment today, with 2 specific lessons in mind:
Be absolutely sure that the spigot was sanitized, and
Cold crash the LBK before bottling.

Cheers!

 

[ME_Brewski]

I bottled an experimental LBK batch yesterday. After pitching, I questioned myself about if I had sanitized the spigot or not. I probably did, but I wasn't certain. So I resolved to rack it to my bottling bucket, and bottle from there.
I dry hopped with an ounce of pellet hops 5 days prior to bottling. I ended up racking quite a bit of hop particulate matter, which doesn't bother me, but my bottling wand was not a fan. The auto-shutoff valve kept clogging, and drizzling beer while I reached for a new bottle.
I am brewing another LBK experiment today, with 2 specific lessons in mind:
Be absolutely sure that the spigot was sanitized, and
Cold crash the LBK before bottling.

Cheers!

Newbie question here. I use a Mr. Beer brewing kit, is that what you are referring to when you say LBK?

 

[BigJack]

Newbie question here. I use a Mr. Beer brewing kit, is that what you are referring to when you say LBK?

lbk= little brown keg = your fermenting vessel.

 

[ME_Brewski]

lbk= little brown keg = your fermenting vessel.

Aha! I figured as much, I just couldn't put the acronym together!

 

[JayDubWill]

I used to use a spray bottle filled with starsan and give the valve a few good sprays before bottling. Now I keg so I rack into a corny and be done with it in literally 5 minutes...for 2 LBK's. i've got about 8 boxes of bottles I'll probably never use again.