primary/bottling bucket woes

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Roasty

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Hi guys! I just made my first batch! It's a kit-based DME Belgian Wit.
It's been happily fermenting away for a few days (brewed it this past Saturday, 6/14) and it's quickly closing in on the time that I need to start thinking about bottling.

I have two buckets for three purposes. I have a primary plastic fermenting bucket that has a spigot for bottling ease. I also have a glass carboy for my secondary.

It appears, however, that I did not think my cunning plan all the way through.:confused:

Being a wheat ale, I didn't think I'd need to rack to the secondary carboy. But now that I'm trying to figure out what to do when I need to bottle, it occured to me that I cannot stir the wort when I add the bottling sugar solution because I'll disturb the yeast/sediment at the bottom that managed to slip through the initial filter.

So my question is...what do I do? Rack to my carboy for a day so that I can clean out my primary/bottling bucket?
 
Short answer: Yup.

:D

Longer answer: Yup. But you don't need to wait a day; just wait long enough to clean and sanitize your bucket. Conversely, you could add the priming sugar solution to the carboy when you're about halfway through the transfer and swirl it, then use your racking cane and tubing - now with bottling wand attached - to bottle your Wit.

Enjoy!

Bob
 
Ok, you brewed last saturday? then no, its NOT TIME TO BOTTLE YET! you got two weeks to kill still.

Also, most primary's do not have a spigot for 'easy' draining. typically the spigot is too low and dumps a 1/3 of your yeast cake into secondary, or the bottling bucket.

A few guys swear by them, but I find racking infinitely easier than worrying about sanitizing the inside of a spigot while its in use, so I can drain thru it, and avoid dumping th eyeast cake at the same time.

to each his own though.

either way, let that wit wait at least another week in primary. NO GREAT BEER IS RUSHED...just look at Budweiser, from grain to can in like 5 days...
 
Haha, yeah I know it's got quite some time to go yet, but I wanted to have a plan for when it IS time. You know, in case I need to go out and buy any parts I don't have or clean the new carboy (out of the box, it had rat turds in it! :eek: ).
 
Next time try fermenting in the carboy then rack to the bucket with the spigot to bottle.
 
Get yourself a plastic bucket (you can even get them at hardware stores) or a food grade frosting or soysauce bucket from a restaraunt, and get a spigot from the lhbs and make a dedicated bottling bucket.
 
Really no hurry at this point. After your gravity has settled down why not rack it off the cake to the glass carboy, put yer air lock on it and let it sit in that for a few days/weeks. Then rack back to the bucket with the spigot (this is a bottling bucket btw) and then bottle. If you rack quietly then no worries. :mug:
 
In retrospect, I realize now that I didn't have much option. I saw last night that I didn't have any tubing with a large enough diameter to fit the blowoff cork for the carboy. At the time I really didn't have the option to run to the hardware store even if I had wanted to.

Here's pictures of the bottling bucket :)cross:), as it stands fermenting. Any other comments or advice is appreciated!

bucket01.jpg

bucket02.jpg
 
I agree with another post, just get another bucket, they are like $10.00. I've got 4 for beer and 2 for wine along with 1 beer and 4 wine glass carboys.
 
- update -

I racked to the carboy last night and intend to let it sit there until sometime during the 2nd week of July when I will rack back to the cleaned bottling bucket and bottle that stuff up!

I took a hydrometer reading and it read at 1.012 if I remember correctly, which is at the high end of the acceptable range for final gravity according to the recipe (again, if I remember correctly).

It smelled great, but it didn't taste so great. It tasted watery with the expected flavor profiles (wheat, orange, coriander, etc.) distantly in the background. Like Kool-Aid with too much water. I'm hoping more time in the carboy and plenty of bottle conditioning will help solve this problem.

Regardless, the beer isn't infected and I succeeded in my 1st siphon so it's not a complete loss.:rockin:
 
1.012 sounds reasonable for a final gravity...I'm guessing the OG was in the neighborhood of 1.045 +/- a few points?
 
OG was supposed to be 1.041 +/-

What I actually got was 1.03. That to me seemed like a huge difference that I could not explain.

Colorwise, it's also a heck of a lot more more a brown ale than a wit. I may do a "late add" next batch.
 
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