Bottling/secondary fermentation confusion!

[Karacticus]

Hello,

I am fairly new to home brewing and very new to the forum, so apologies if this is a question that has been answered a million times before...

I am currently on my third batch of home brew after a fairly rocky start. My first batch (Woodforde's Wherry) was reasonably good, although I allowed the pressure to drop and lost a lot of it. I bottled my second batch (a Ruby Red), although it doesn't taste great with some off flavours. I bodged up the heating of it I think - too hot, then cold, hot again etc.

Anyway, so I'm on my third batch (Wherry again), which is a day into it's primary ferment and seems to be going well and this time I've got a more steady temperature. I used 21 litres instead of the suggested 23, as I heard this gives good results and my last was a bit weak. I plan to transfer to bottles after two weeks. My questions are around the best way to do this.

1/ Do I transfer to a keg fitted with a 'little bottler' and add my sugar, then ship it straight into bottles from there?

2/ Or do I transfer to the keg without sugar and allow a period of conditioning before I later bottle. If so, how long and how warm/cool.

3/ Do I do something different?

4/ Re. sugar, is it better to add to the keg dry or heat with a small amount of water? Assuming I'm not simply priming each bottle.

Hope this isn't too much to ask. Thanks in advance.

 

[C-Rider]

I think most of us doing bottle conditioning transfer w/a siphon from the fermenter to a bottling bucket w/a spout and a length of tubing w/a spring fitting on the end. No need for a keg. Add sugar to the bottling bucket and then transfer the beer to it. That will mix up the sugar w/the beer. Revvy has a good page on it here:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/bottling-tips-homebrewer-94812/