Does my carboy have to be full?

[danimal23]

After boiling our first all-grain boil, we were short of our 23L mark on our primary (a 40L plastic container.) We were unsure what to do so we just topped it up to the line with water. It was probably over 5L short.

Should we have mashed once more before boiling? Or just left it as it was?

Our secondary is a 23L glass carboy.

Any tips or suggestions for a noob please!

 

[paraordnance]

No need to top it up, depending if you reached your SG. I would ditch that 40L fermenter or use it as your swamp cooler and just ferment in 23 L carboy, and many here will advise u not to use secondary at all

Sent from GT-I9100M

 

[danimal23]

I've heard that before not to use a secondary. What would be the pros and cons? What is a swamp cooler?

And our SG was lower than expected after topping it up, now we know for next time.

 

[paraordnance]

Swamp cooler used to maintain fermentation temp. You fill it with water, set your carboy inside and add some frozen water bottles to keep your brew at recommended yeast temp. My kit came with same 40 L plastic tub, and I use it that way. Works great! Search this forum for swamp cooler lots of great ideas.

Sent from GT-I9100M

 

[Theis]

You can search swamp cooler on the site for many examples but simply put it is a big tub with water and sometimes ice that you put your primary fermentor into and an effort to decrease the temperature in the primary to less than ambient room temp. Many people will wrap the carboy in a thin piece of cloth like a t-shirt to increase evaporative cooling.

 

[danimal23]

Awesome, I'll give that a try!

 

[danimal23]

Okay, after reading other threads about primary and secondary, I'm still confused about one thing. Here are 2 scenarios:

Do I use my glass carboy as a primary or my plastic 40L bucket (assuming no transfer to secondary)

Do I use my glass carboy as a primary or secondary? (assuming dry hop is needed)

The batch I'm doing now is an IPA that will be dry hopped with pellets. Plastic bucket was used for primary and has been sitting for 10 days. I'm deciding now whether or not to transfer it.

 

[DrJerryrigger]

Okay, after reading other threads about primary and secondary, I'm still confused about one thing. Here are 2 scenarios:

Do I use my glass carboy as a primary or my plastic 40L bucket (assuming no transfer to secondary)

Do I use my glass carboy as a primary or secondary? (assuming dry hop is needed)

The batch I'm doing now is an IPA that will be dry hopped with pellets. Plastic bucket was used for primary and has been sitting for 10 days. I'm deciding now whether or not to transfer it.

It all doesn't really matter. You can use either. If you were to age it for 12+weeks, I'd say use the glass, but if not it's up to you.
Transferring it will open up possibility for oxidation and infection. It's a pain in the rear to clean hops out of a glass carboy.

Just a few thought I had, but really, it doesn't matter, people do it all different ways with great results.

 

[danimal23]

So can I just skip the transfer to the glass carboy and add the pellet hops about a week before bottling?

 

[DrJerryrigger]

Sure, that would work.

 

[danimal23]

I'm reading that using a plastic primary with a large head space is bad because of CO2 - should I rack to my glass carboy for this reason, and than in the future just use my glass carboy?

 

[DrJerryrigger]

You really don't need to worry about it so much. I prefer glass myself, but I mostly use plastic because that's what I have. It works fine.