Sediment removal
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à Flannagáin
Well-Known Member
As far as I know, there's not. I guess, maybe, you could leave it in your fermenter for months, that might clear it up? There's almost always going to be yeast that settles on the bottom of the bottle, at least that's what I hear.
abracadabra
Well-Known Member
First off use a secondary fermenter if you are not already doing so.
Then another way to help clarify your beer is use Irish Moss aka carragheen the last 15 minutes of your boil when you do an All Grain brew. I don't know if this would apply to an extract brews as I never bothered doing one. Maybe others could address that.
Another way is to go with cornie kegs instead of bottles. Since the cornie get the liquid off of the bottom of the keg you simply discard the first glass or 2.
You see some commercial brews with sediment in them, Blue Moon Belgian White come to mind. But that last little bit tastes bad so I try not to drink it.
Also Orfy's suggestion is a good one, don't drink from the bottle and pour carefully.
Then another way to help clarify your beer is use Irish Moss aka carragheen the last 15 minutes of your boil when you do an All Grain brew. I don't know if this would apply to an extract brews as I never bothered doing one. Maybe others could address that.
Another way is to go with cornie kegs instead of bottles. Since the cornie get the liquid off of the bottom of the keg you simply discard the first glass or 2.
You see some commercial brews with sediment in them, Blue Moon Belgian White come to mind. But that last little bit tastes bad so I try not to drink it.
Also Orfy's suggestion is a good one, don't drink from the bottle and pour carefully.
Bones
Member
Pretty much everything abracadabra said will definitely help with the clarity of your brew. A secondary fermentor will allow for more of the nasties to settle out and I'm not sure how the Irish moss works, haven't used it myself, but I've heard that works also.
But it sounds like you are more specifically concerned with the layer of sediment at the bottom of your bottles. And neither of these things will eliminate that. There is no way you can avoid having sediment at the bottom of your bottles.........bottles being the key word.
Because you are using bottles, you have to carbonate them, which is done by adding new sugar to the beer just before bottling. During the fermentation process, all the sugars in your brew were exhausted and the resulting CO2 was allowed to escape through a blow-off tube or airlock.
But now you need carbonation for your bottles. So you add sugar to the brew right before bottling so that you basically have a mini-fermentation in each and every bottle and you're containing the CO2 for carbonation.
It's recommended that you pour the beer from a bottle to a glass and to do so in one continuous, gentle pour to minimize the agitation of the sediment bed at the bottom of the bottle. Watch it as you pour and leave a 1/2 swallow behind if you have to in order to keep from pouring the sediment into the glass.
The other suggestion was to use a corny keg. But you can think of a corny keg as just one big bottle, you still have the sediment, but like it was explained before, you're draining the beer from the bottom, so the sediment is the first thing out and you can just discard it down the drain.
The alternative is to use a CO2 tank with a corny keg........then you aren't adding sugar just before bottling/kegging. You're using the CO2 to carbonate the brew and you should have very little sediment collecting at the bottom of the keg, if any. Perhaps just a little bit that was still suspended in the brew from fermentor.
But it sounds like you are more specifically concerned with the layer of sediment at the bottom of your bottles. And neither of these things will eliminate that. There is no way you can avoid having sediment at the bottom of your bottles.........bottles being the key word.
Because you are using bottles, you have to carbonate them, which is done by adding new sugar to the beer just before bottling. During the fermentation process, all the sugars in your brew were exhausted and the resulting CO2 was allowed to escape through a blow-off tube or airlock.
But now you need carbonation for your bottles. So you add sugar to the brew right before bottling so that you basically have a mini-fermentation in each and every bottle and you're containing the CO2 for carbonation.
It's recommended that you pour the beer from a bottle to a glass and to do so in one continuous, gentle pour to minimize the agitation of the sediment bed at the bottom of the bottle. Watch it as you pour and leave a 1/2 swallow behind if you have to in order to keep from pouring the sediment into the glass.
The other suggestion was to use a corny keg. But you can think of a corny keg as just one big bottle, you still have the sediment, but like it was explained before, you're draining the beer from the bottom, so the sediment is the first thing out and you can just discard it down the drain.
The alternative is to use a CO2 tank with a corny keg........then you aren't adding sugar just before bottling/kegging. You're using the CO2 to carbonate the brew and you should have very little sediment collecting at the bottom of the keg, if any. Perhaps just a little bit that was still suspended in the brew from fermentor.
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