I want I carbed ale

[wingedcoyote]

Great post Hfx, and very handsome beer. Did you take gravity readings? From your description and the photos my guess is that your yeast wasn't totally done fermenting and it created a little carbonation with residual sugars in the bottle.

Also, your ambient temp indoors is 55f? And I thought I was tough for keeping it in the low 60s!

 

[rocketsan]

You're splitting the tiniest of hairs to make a moot point. That amounts to a waste of my time.



Brew on!

Nice attitude...not.


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[Hfxhomebrewer]

Wingedcoyote, I brew in my basement and its been hovering between 50 and 55 all winter down there. Chilly stuff.

I took gravity readings, FG was 1.012. It was at that level for 4 consecutive days so I deemed it finished, turned off the heat source and let it cool down.

 

[JordanKnudson]

I boiled the hops on the stove in 1.5 litres of water, the Northern Brewer for 20 minutes and the Fuggles for 15 minutes. I made a last-minute filter using a sanitised steel strainer and paper coffee filters to filter out most of the hop matter as I poured the 'hop tea' into the fermenter (didn't plan on doing this but the pellets gave me little choice, I wasn't comfortable dumping that into the fermenter, maybe next time I will). To the hop tea I added the malt extracts, molasses, and a mix of boiled and cold water to bring the volume up to 5 gallons and achieve a temp of 70f. I pitched the yeast dry on to the aerated wort and maintained the temp at 70f throughout fermentation. I did not seal the fermenter completely, I left the lid on but not snapped down. After fermentation stopped (confirmed with gravity readings) I unplugged my heat source and let the beer cool to ambient temp, which was around 55f for the remainder of it's time in primary.

This beer stayed in primary for 3 weeks, but 2 days before bottling I added gelatin finings to improve the clarity, it worked very well (first time using gelatin). I bottled in 500ml brown glass bottles without using any priming sugar whatsoever, and left the beer in the bottles for 3 further weeks before drinking the first. From the outset it was smooth drinking, very sessionable, clear and very tasty (to my tastes). There are no off smells, no off flavours, I haven't noticed any oxidation yet. The hop aroma comes through well, very mild bittering which is what I was aiming for.

I am a new brewer, this is only my sixth batch, I don't pretend to know it all but I do know what good beer tastes like, and this batch is good beer. This was the first batch I ever made using a recipe I came up with using a brew calculator, my first time using hops, and my first time using gelatin (though that wasn't part of the original plan). I learned A LOT from this batch and the results far exceeded my expectations. To a lot of people I am sure I did things in making this batch you would swear up and down was the absolute wrong thing to do (no yeast starter, no seal on the fermenter, filtering out the hop matter etc), to that I say try it yourself and see.

Hfx

Wow, this is a very unusual method! If I'm understanding correctly, you are not boiling the wort at all; instead you are just mixing it directly in the fermentor using 70 degree water, and adding a hop tea, then pitching the yeast?

I'm curious about one other thing. You mention that this was your 6th batch, and your first time using hops. What kinds of beer did you brew prior to this batch? Did you really not have any hops in there at all? Or did you mean that you were using pre-hopped extract, and thus you didn't need to add any more hops yourself?

 

[Hfxhomebrewer]

Yup, pre-hopped, canned extract kits and one Festa Brew kit were all I had brewed prior to this batch, so I hadn't needed to worry about using hops myself.

And you are correct, I did not boil the wort at all. I warmed the containers of the malt extract in hot water to make them easier to pour, but I literally poured the LME into about 4l of boiled water (including the 1.5l hop tea), thoroughly mixed it and brought it to 20l using cold water, then used a mix of boiled and cold water to get to 70f and 23l volume. Dry yeast sprinkled on top of the foam generated via aeration, and you're off to the races.

Like I said, the method goes against what a lot of brewers trust, but why not give it a try? All you have to lose is whatever the ingredients cost and about an hour of your time to put the batch together. The ingredient list I posted cost me about $25 here in Nova Scotia, you may be able to get them for less, and literally an hour including sanitising and boiling the hops.

 

[JordanKnudson]

Interesting. I guess you don't really need to boil the wort if you don't want to when using extract...the DMS is supposedly taken care of in the production of the extract, so the only other major factors in boiling (aside from non-essentials like Maillard reactions) would be sterilization of the extract and hop utilization. Since you made the hop tea, that's one down. And really, I think boiling extract to sterilize is mainly a precaution. It seems to be packaged pretty clean.

I can see the appeal of doing it that way for sure, it would be a major time saver. On the other hand, I brew AG (where you can't get away with not boiling) and I'm obsessed with all of the little details of the mash, water treatment, brewing chemistry, etc, so I don't mind spending the extra few hours playing around on brew day!

 

[Setesh]

The only potential problem I see is that bottle conditioning protects the beer from oxidation in the bottle. If there isn't any CO2 being produced, then the bottle will have beer plus air in it. This will oxidize the beer sooner or later. I think you'll have to figure out a way to purge the bottle with CO2 prior to filling it like the commercial breweries have to do.

I could be wrong, but I don't think the CO2 produced after the bottle is capped helps prevent oxidation. The CO2 in solution when you bottle the beer helps by allowing you to cap on foam, but any CO2 producted later provides no oxidation benefit.
By this I mean that if you mix priming sugar into your beer, fill the bottle carefully so that you have no foam but only beer and empty (filled with air) head space, then cap that beer, I don't think the CO2 that develops over the next few weeks is going to protect your beer. The O2 that was in the head space will not be pushed out, it will remain. As the pressure builds it's volume will decrease, but the same amount of molecules remain to do their dastardly work.

When you go to bottle your beer there is usually CO2 left in solution. The act of transferring the beer to bottles releases some of this CO2 which forms a foam. This CO2 filled foam displaces the air in the head space. This is why capping on foam is so important, and I imagine this is what you were talking about.

 

[wingedcoyote]

I could be wrong, but I don't think the CO2 produced after the bottle is capped helps prevent oxidation. The CO2 in solution when you bottle the beer helps by allowing you to cap on foam, but any CO2 producted later provides no oxidation benefit.
By this I mean that if you mix priming sugar into your beer, fill the bottle carefully so that you have no foam but only beer and empty (filled with air) head space, then cap that beer, I don't think the CO2 that develops over the next few weeks is going to protect your beer. The O2 that was in the head space will not be pushed out, it will remain. As the pressure builds it's volume will decrease, but the same amount of molecules remain to do their dastardly work.

When you go to bottle your beer there is usually CO2 left in solution. The act of transferring the beer to bottles releases some of this CO2 which forms a foam. This CO2 filled foam displaces the air in the head space. This is why capping on foam is so important, and I imagine this is what you were talking about.

I feel like I've always heard that yeast will consume oxygen left in the bottles in the process of bottle carbing. As for capping on foam... I've heard of that as an important practice in bottling from a keg, but not in bottling from a bottling bucket. At least I hope it isn't that important, because when I bottle beer with a wand from my bottling bucket it doesn't really foam at all.

 

[JordanKnudson]

I've heard of that as an important practice in bottling from a keg, but not in bottling from a bottling bucket. At least I hope it isn't that important, because when I bottle beer with a wand from my bottling bucket it doesn't really foam at all.

Yep! When you bottle straight out of the fermentor, you don't want any bubbling. You'd be oxygenating the finished beer at that point, which of course is no good.

 

[Espressomattic]

Some great reies. Like the. Offer forums I am on you can have three people with six opinions

When I used to work in real ale pubs I used to keep pedigree. I had two. Us timers who insisted on no sparkler. The beer poured flat. No carb, nothing. And it really enhanced the true taste.

Now I tried a bottles at night with zero carbonation and it was ok. I could actually see where a small amount would enhance it. However it lacked enough body for a car less beer. Something gulletsondon pride has a lot of body which makes up the lack of carb.

I brewed a partial mash last night with 2 kg pale ale malts, 500g of dark roasts malt and a pale ale extract. Used fuggles and goldings in the boil with goldings as a late addition

I th k this will have more body to carry zero carbonation (or what I define as zero anyway)

Being new to brewing all the replies have been really beneficial so thanks!

 

[Setesh]

Yep! When you bottle straight out of the fermentor, you don't want any bubbling. You'd be oxygenating the finished beer at that point, which of course is no good.

How is CO2 coming out of solution going to oxygenate your beer?

 

[JordanKnudson]

How is CO2 coming out of solution going to oxygenate your beer?

I guess what I meant is that if you are getting bubbles, it might be that the beer is sloshing (not really a problem with a bottling wand, but since the initial comment was about the difference between bottling from a keg versus from a fermentor, this was "if you are getting bubbling bottling from the fermentor"). If the beer is sloshing, you are risking oxygenating -- same as shaking the fermentor to aerate before pitching the yeast, except at this stage you wouldn't want that.

 

[Setesh]

I guess what I meant is that if you are getting bubbles, it might be that the beer is sloshing (not really a problem with a bottling wand, but since the initial comment was about the difference between bottling from a keg versus from a fermentor, this was "if you are getting bubbling bottling from the fermentor"). If the beer is sloshing, you are risking oxygenating -- same as shaking the fermentor to aerate before pitching the yeast, except at this stage you wouldn't want that.

I see what you are saying, but you will get CO2 coming out of suspension even if you are bottling strait from the fermentor. There isn't nearly as much for sure, but it's still in there, and some of it will come out whenever you disturb it. That's why you want to know the temperature the beer is at before you calculate your priming sugar charge. A certain amount of CO2 remains in the beer depending on the temperature it is at and you need to account for it to end up with the target volume of carbonation. And as you pointed out the bottling want prevents sloshing but does disturb the beer quite a lot when it first starts coming out and before the beer level goes above the nozzle, but unless you have purged your bottle with CO2 you are once again in the same boat whether from a keg or the fermentor. Having the ability to purge before and after filling like the pro bottling lines would be great, but for most of us homebrewers (those without counterpressure fillers) capping on foam is the best we can easily do to purge as much oxygen as possible from the bottle.

 

[JordanKnudson]

I think we're in agreement and I'm just not articulating myself very well today.

 

[Setesh]

I think we're in agreement and I'm just not articulating myself very well today.

That's OK, it was a fun debate anyhow

 

[Espressomattic]

Ok so I experimented. One beer was bottled and totally flat. It was ok. I also tried one last night that had say for two days. While no big bubbles the beer did have this very very small amount of fizz that sat on the toungue. This is what I recall from cask we back home and what I called a flat beer.

I now know I prefer that tin amount of fizz.

 

[JordanKnudson]

Great to hear your conclusion! Happy to see a thread result in an actual, firm answer for the OP based on experiment, since that doesn't always happen.

 

[heckler73]

I bottled an 80/- three weeks ago using 1 oz dextrose with the intention of a flat ale. It's now still quite flat, with no head and very slight carbonation. Quite tasty, but I think I'll wait another week before cracking the next one.

 

[Espressomattic]

I also have some beer that went a bit wrong that is ultra carbed. I was given hydrometer that it turns out was about 15 points out. So I bottled an APA at what I thought was 1010 when it was really 1035. Thankfully for bottle bombs.

However I have found that a couple of hours in the freezer calms it enough for me to pour without losing over half of it.

My point is, the carb really adds something to be release of the flavours. Maybe I am turning all American?

 

[Setesh]

My point is, the carb really adds something to be release of the flavours. Maybe I am turning all American?

Welcome to America, we're gassy

 

[JordanKnudson]

Welcome to America, we're gassy

Ha!!!