Sediment in Bottles

[Walshi99]

Hi,

I have just taken my first brew through to conditioning in my bottles. I have noticed that a layer of sediment appeared in the bottom of the bottles at around the 10 day mark, is this normal?

For information I, as i thought it was good practice, did a secondary fermentation at 7 days in (after activity had ceased) and then left that in the fridge for 2 weeks. I then used that 2nd fermenter as my bottling bucket, priming directly into it. I used Corn Sugar as my priming agent as was aiming for 2.5 volumes of CO2.

When you open one of the bottles (which i did to check the gas levels) the beer is quite clear, but does become cloudy if you mix the sediment in.

Any ideas what would have caused this and how to possibly avoid in the future?

Regards

 

[thehaze]

You can't avoid it if you're bottling. But what you can do is:

- make sure your mash runs clear
- have a good hotbreak
- use irish moss in the boil
- whirlpool the wort and let it rest after boil. 15-20 minutes will help settle lots of malt protein, bits and hops at the bottom of your kettle, which in return helps you...
- transfer clear wort to the fermenter
- use an yeast that flocculates and sedimentates well
- cold crash
- bottle avoiding transferring to much trub in the bottles, but cold crashing will take care of that, so you only need to siphon from above the trub layer

Any beer that has sediment at the bottom, will become cloudy if you pour everything in: think belgian beers, hefeweizens ( you actually want that sediment layer in weissbiers ), lambics, etc. You need to chill your beer properly, pour gently and leave behind in the bottle whatever sediment you have.

 

[Walshi99]

Hi,

I have just taken my first brew through to conditioning in my bottles. I have noticed that a layer of sediment appeared in the bottom of the bottles at around the 10 day mark, is this normal?

For information I, as i thought it was good practice, did a secondary fermentation at 7 days in (after activity had ceased) and then left that in the fridge for 2 weeks. I then used that 2nd fermenter as my bottling bucket, priming directly into it. I used Corn Sugar as my priming agent as was aiming for 2.5 volumes of CO2.

When you open one of the bottles (which i did to check the gas levels) the beer is quite clear, but does become cloudy if you mix the sediment in.

Any ideas what would have caused this and how to possibly avoid in the future?

Regards

Thank you so much for the quick advice. My actual current brew is a Hefezeizen as well and so I can relax for the next few weeks then as well .

One further question concerning whirlpooling, should I do this before or after using the wort chiller? And also does cold crashing mean cooling it very quickly using the chiller or placing the fermented wort into say a fridge after fermentation has stopped....or niether of these?

Regards and thanks a million

 

[thehaze]

I use a Grainfather, so I don't have a dedicated pump to continously whirlpool. What I have is a stainless steel paddle. Once boil ended, I quickly cool down the wort ( I use my counterflow chiller, by recirculating wort through it and back into the kettle ) to something like 70- 80C / 158-176F and then add hops ( if you don't have hops to add, don't ). I then gently, but firmly create a whirlpool with my paddle, inside the kettle, without splashing around too much. I do it for something like 30-60 seconds. I then let it rest for 5-10 minutes. I come back and repeat. Repeating is only when you add hops, as you want as much contact between hops and wort, so I re-suspend those by stirring again.

What you can do is cool down quickly to 170-180F, whirlpool once and leave your wort to rest for 30 minutes. You can do something else while waiting and come back to it in 30 minutes. The temperature will also drop and when you transfer/siphon - depends on your process - to the fermenter, you should have clear wort. So you only transfer from above. The Grainfather has a filter at the bottom, so it makes things easier, but it does clog a bit and transfer will take longer. I just learned not to be bothered by the longer time and just wait.

Cold crashing is when you drop the temperature of the beer, after fermentation and / or before packaging. So you place your fermenter in a fridge and leave it for 2-5 days. 2-3 days would suffice, but if you can go longer, it will not harm. Do pay attention to suck back and O2 ingress when cold crashing. There are ways of preventing oxidation when cold crashing, and I recommend searching this forum for the best suited for you. This is most important when cold crashing beers with lots of hops in it, especially dry hop.

 

[Jag75]

Another tip in limiting sediment in your bottles is leaving the beer in your fermenter longer.

 

[DVCNick]

Even if you did get totally clear beer into the bottles (which you should strive for), if you are bottle conditioning there will be a small layer of yeast/trub that develops from the conditioning process (fermentation of the priming sugar you added). The only way to avoid this is to keg carb and then bottle from the keg.

As mentioned though, if you have a hefe, getting some of that layer in the glass is not bad at all. Some commercial beers of the style advise that you swirl that layer up and try to get it in the bottle. Just for future reference, if you have an IPA or something where you want that layer to stay behind in the bottle, you just have to be careful pouring... pour in one smooth motion, let the bottles sit upright in the fridge for at least a few hours before you pour them (longer is better) which will get the sediment mostly cold-crashed out.

Personally I just wouldn't cold crash the fermenter unless you have a way to 100% deny oxygen (air) incursion. On this point, if you have to ask right now, you don't have this ability. (Also most people on their first brew don't really have a way to cold crash a 5 gallon fermenter anyway)

"Whirlpooling" at ~170 for post-flameout hop additions is fine for IPAs; I don't think it applies to hefes though, or at least none of the recipes I recall seeing. So for your beer, for next time, I would:

1) Flameout

2) Chill as quickly as possible for as long as your immersion chiller is working efficiently. Agitating the wort during this time will make the chiller work better. I just stir the wort with the chiller itself. After about 15 minutes you can make a judgement call; lots of people continue with the chiller until the wort is at pitching temp, but, in the interest of not sending so much water down the driveway, I stop with the immersion chiller at about 120F or so; ymmv on this.

3) Let the kettle settle out. Hop material and any other solids will mostly drop to the bottom in about 20 minutes; sometimes I'll wait as long as an hour; just make sure the lid is on the kettle and it is sealed up as much as possible as the wort is subject to getting infected at this point. You can stir it into a whirlpool at the start and all the trub will collect in the middle. Or if you don't bother it will just be in a uniform layer across the bottom. In practice I don't see a big difference between the two.

4) Transfer to sanitized fermenter, leaving most of the trub behind in the kettle. If some trub is transferred, no big deal though.

5) Cool the rest of the way to pitching temp if needed. In my early days this meant putting the fermenter in an ice bath. Note that if you do this, you can get a layered temp in the fermenter pretty easily, so get as much of the wort below the water line as possible.

6) Pitch, ferment... skip the secondary.

7) If you are willing to spring for carbonation drops, you can prime the bottles and fill them straight from the fermenter. This guarantees that each bottle is primed evenly, and also avoids the oxygen exposure of racking to a secondary bottling bucket for batch priming. The drops are going to be a slight cost adder vs. batch priming with a corn sugar solution. If you do go with the solution, make sure it is mixed as evenly as possible without splashing the wort.

8) Leave at room temp for two weeks

9) Pop a couple in the fridge for 24 hours and give them a try.

 

[VikeMan]

For information I, as i thought it was good practice, did a secondary fermentation at 7 days in (after activity had ceased) and then left that in the fridge for 2 weeks. I then used that 2nd fermenter as my bottling bucket, priming directly into it. I used Corn Sugar as my priming agent as was aiming for 2.5 volumes of CO2.

If you added your sugar to the secondary and stirred, you undid the settling that happened in the secondary. Better to give the beer that extra time in the primary, and then carefully rack to a bottling bucket, leaving as much trub behind as possible.

 

[Walshi99]

Even if you did get totally clear beer into the bottles (which you should strive for), if you are bottle conditioning there will be a small layer of yeast/trub that develops from the conditioning process (fermentation of the priming sugar you added). The only way to avoid this is to keg carb and then bottle from the keg.

As mentioned though, if you have a hefe, getting some of that layer in the glass is not bad at all. Some commercial beers of the style advise that you swirl that layer up and try to get it in the bottle. Just for future reference, if you have an IPA or something where you want that layer to stay behind in the bottle, you just have to be careful pouring... pour in one smooth motion, let the bottles sit upright in the fridge for at least a few hours before you pour them (longer is better) which will get the sediment mostly cold-crashed out.

Personally I just wouldn't cold crash the fermenter unless you have a way to 100% deny oxygen (air) incursion. On this point, if you have to ask right now, you don't have this ability. (Also most people on their first brew don't really have a way to cold crash a 5 gallon fermenter anyway)

"Whirlpooling" at ~170 for post-flameout hop additions is fine for IPAs; I don't think it applies to hefes though, or at least none of the recipes I recall seeing. So for your beer, for next time, I would:

1) Flameout

2) Chill as quickly as possible for as long as your immersion chiller is working efficiently. Agitating the wort during this time will make the chiller work better. I just stir the wort with the chiller itself. After about 15 minutes you can make a judgement call; lots of people continue with the chiller until the wort is at pitching temp, but, in the interest of not sending so much water down the driveway, I stop with the immersion chiller at about 120F or so; ymmv on this.

3) Let the kettle settle out. Hop material and any other solids will mostly drop to the bottom in about 20 minutes; sometimes I'll wait as long as an hour; just make sure the lid is on the kettle and it is sealed up as much as possible as the wort is subject to getting infected at this point. You can stir it into a whirlpool at the start and all the trub will collect in the middle. Or if you don't bother it will just be in a uniform layer across the bottom. In practice I don't see a big difference between the two.

4) Transfer to sanitized fermenter, leaving most of the trub behind in the kettle. If some trub is transferred, no big deal though.

5) Cool the rest of the way to pitching temp if needed. In my early days this meant putting the fermenter in an ice bath. Note that if you do this, you can get a layered temp in the fermenter pretty easily, so get as much of the wort below the water line as possible.

6) Pitch, ferment... skip the secondary.

7) If you are willing to spring for carbonation drops, you can prime the bottles and fill them straight from the fermenter. This guarantees that each bottle is primed evenly, and also avoids the oxygen exposure of racking to a secondary bottling bucket for batch priming. The drops are going to be a slight cost adder vs. batch priming with a corn sugar solution. If you do go with the solution, make sure it is mixed as evenly as possible without splashing the wort.

8) Leave at room temp for two weeks

9) Pop a couple in the fridge for 24 hours and give them a try.

Thanks very much for the detailed explanation, will help me loads.

 

[Walshi99]

Thanks very much for the detailed explanation, will help me loads.

and a question, if you where to cold crash by say putting your fermenter into a fridge. Would keeping an airlock on it not stop oxygen incursion?

 

[thehaze]

and a question, if you where to cold crash by say putting your fermenter into a fridge. Would keeping an airlock on it not stop oxygen incursion?

No. Once beer gets colder, whatever liquid you have in the airlock, will be sucked in the beer, along with O2. It's an opening, albeit a little one, but O2 will still go on and get sucked through the airlock.

 

[Walshi99]

Ahh ok, so is it better just just use a screw top / to completely seal it off?

 

[thehaze]

No, you can't seal it off completely.

There are lots of threads I recommend you go through, to find out the best way for you and your system/process, to avoid O2 ingress. Here are a few:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/cold-crash-suck-back-volume-estimate.674042/#post-8780300homebrewtalk.com/threads/positive-pressure-to-avoid-suckback.674331/
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/cold-crash-and-oxidation.674564/#post-8770956

 

[Walshi99]

Thank you

 

[beerlife]

If you use the S type airlock, it will suck in air, but not liquid as both sides have the same bubbles in the airlock.

I might not be liked for this, but the amount of O2 that will be sucked in during cold crash is minimal. CO2 is heavier than O2 and it will be covering the beer, so the chances of the O2 getting to the beer itself is pretty damn low.

I use a double door fridge to ferment in with a temp controller. There is very little O2 in the fridge mostly as fermentation releases a lot of CO2 and the fridge is pretty sealed and I rarely open it up. I then cold crash the beer by setting the controller without having to open the fridge. I have been doing this for years and I've NEVER had an infected beer.

 

[VikeMan]

I might not be liked for this, but the amount of O2 that will be sucked in during cold crash is minimal. CO2 is heavier than O2 and it will be covering the beer, so the chances of the O2 getting to the beer itself is pretty damn low.

If air is sucked into the fermenter, the chance of some O2 reaching the beer is 100%. See Fick's Law.

 

[DVCNick]

One more comment on the hefe: There is zero reason to cold crash it and in fact I would say it is only going to hurt it even if you could do it correctly.
The point of cold crashing is to clear the beer of hop material and/or yeast prior to transfer. This is desirable in an IPA that, say, has dry hops floating around in there and is supposed to be a clean fermentation without the yeast being a flavor contributor.

In a hefe, you have no dry hops, and you want the yeast in it. So I would not even consider cold crashing.

For example... with my kegged hefes, even though the yeast is not very floculant, over time it does start to drop out and the last few pints off the keg are pretty clear. Those aren't the best ones, because with a hefe, the yeast is supposed to be in there as a flavor contributor.
Just say no to cold crashing the hefe.

 

[beerlife]

If air is sucked into the fermenter, the chance of some O2 reaching the beer is 100%. See Fick's Law.

Even if "some" O2 reaches the beer, the bacteria will soon be suffocated by the CO2 before creating any havoc. Imagine the amount of O2 you put into the brew when you aerate the beer before pitching yeast, same principal. Like mentioned, I have brewed 100's of beers and always crashed with oxygen being sucked back and never had a bad brew.

PS!! one other way I have seen is that people fit a balloon on a breather a day or so before crashing, the balloon will swell up with C02, when crashing it basically just sucks in all the CO2 into the fermentation bucket again.

 

[VikeMan]

Even if "some" O2 reaches the beer,

It will.

the bacteria will soon be suffocated by the CO2 before creating any havoc.

The problem with oxidation doesn't (usually) have anything to do with bacteria. The problem is that staling is accelerated. More O2 --> faster staling

Imagine the amount of O2 you put into the brew when you aerate the beer before pitching yeast, same principal.

It's not the same. The O2 you add before pitching the yeast is consumed by the yeast in an hour or so.

Like mentioned, I have brewed 100's of beers and always crashed with oxygen being sucked back and never had a bad brew.

Nevertheless, whatever O2 you introduced to your beers post fermentation caused accelerated staling. It can't not have.

PS!! one other way I have seen is that people fit a balloon on a breather a day or so before crashing, the balloon will swell up with C02, when crashing it basically just sucks in all the CO2 into the fermentation bucket again.

Yep. That's a pretty good way to do it, assuming the balloon holds enough CO2 for the full crash.

 

[DVCNick]

The issue is oxidation, not infection. Your method of doing it in a closed fridge that is mostly full of C02 is better than nothing though.