Cloudy Beer at bottling

[beerlover_NZ]

My very first brew has just been bottled. I used the coopers Lager brew kit what I was wanting to know is it typical for the beer to be still cloudy after the initial fermentation?. It is going to be doing its second ferment in the bottles as per the guide lines in the instruction sheet. The hydrometer reading was 1020 which is around 3% alcohol and the brew had stopped fermenting after four days once again the sheet says that it should be ready in 4-7 days when the fermentation started it was letting off that much CO2 that I had to refill the airlock five times in the first two days due to the water being spat out of it is this also typical of the beer?. Also I used the carbonation/sugar drops while bottling

Thanks in advance for your help

 

[COLObrewer]

You will be better served with 3 weeks fermentation before bottling, and ignoring most of what is written on the instructions that are included in the kits.

If you bottled after 4 days then you need to get the bottles somewhere so they won't hurt anyone if they burst, or wrap a towel around them, etc.

 

[ZehBaron]

Yep, if you bottled a lager after 4 days you're mostly likely sitting on some pretty potent bottle bombs, my friend. You'll want to refrigerate those suckers or keep them somewhere cold and easy to clean up. Given that they don't explode, let them sit for about a month to condition and you'll be much more pleased with your results.

Speaking of lagers, if it fermented that vigorously I'm guessing you fermented at a fairly high temperature, meaning that as of now you've got more of a steam beer than a lager. Lagers are meant to be fermented cold, usually around 50 degrees F.

In the future, try reading up on fermentation times and techniques rather than following those nonsense kit instructions. There are plenty of extremely helpful threads on this site that'll help you out with that--just poke around for a few minutes and you'll be up to your neck in advice.

In the meantime, here's to living and learning .

 

[beerlover_NZ]

Thanks for the info guys as for the bottles they are the PET (plastic ones) it is hard to get glass bottles over here from the brew shops unless you have drank alot of beer and stored the bottles (which I didn't I recycled them a long time ago). From what I have read on these forums so far is that coopers put ale yeast in their kits so next round when I do a lager I will buy the proper lager yeast. Yes the fermentation went real quick it sat at 24C due to the fact it is summer over here was wanting to get it to 18C for the main fermentation.

 

[thirdedition]

I brewed that same kit, and yeah it was very cloudy when I bottled it. After 3 weeks though it is very clear and it doesn't taste too bad either.

It was my first batch and I didn't do a lot of things right and it still came out fine.

 

[beerlover_NZ]

I have just put my second brew down This time I have taken a hydrometer reading for the start gravity which is 1050. This time it is a real ale kit that I am using but found the following recipe which is for an Irish Ale which seemed to be pretty easy all I had to add was 300grams of Golden Syrup (http://www.coopers.com.au/homebrew/makeBeer.php?cid=5&bid=109) and I am not using a coopers kit for this one I am using Lion Breweries real ale kit which is the same weight as a coopers anyway. This one is getting brewed at 21C