Several Questions

[Aaronh2500]

I have been brewing for almost a year now and have been strictly using Brewer's Best beer kits. I have made around 8 five gallon batches and have really only had one that turned out bad. I have several questions I need an opinion on.

1. Should i throw the dried hops directly into the brewpot or can it put them in a bag when boiling the wort? Can I strain the wort when I put it into the fermentor? Does the residue from the hops have to be in the fermentor?

2. I just recently started using glass as a primary. The kit instructions say the beer will take 3 to 7 day to ferment, the batch I have going right now will be 14 days in the carboy and the airlock is still going. Can I go ahead and bottle or should I wait it out? I have transferred the beer 2 times from one carboy to another to remove the junk from the bottom.

Any help would be appreciated, I have gotten the hang of this and am really starting to get interested in this but always want to improve.

 

[hopsalot]

are you talking about pellets?
throw them in yes you can strain afterwards if you want i would not though. if you do sanitize!!!

wait it out, you should have just left it in the primary for 2-4 weeks, all that transfering could attribute to oxidation

always take hydrometer readings in order to know when to bottle

 

[Aaronh2500]

Yes, i am talking pellets.

I checked the SG and it is @ 1.010 which is where the instructions tell me where it should finish. I am brewing an amber.

 

[steelerguy]

You can put the hops in a bag when boiling the wort, just make sure you use a bag that can take the heat for that long. Those hops break into pretty small bit though, so I bet quite a bit still gets out. Is there a reason you are worried about it? Even if some makes it into the primary, when the yeast settle out, it covers them up and is pretty easy to rack the beer off without getting any into the secondary or bottling bucket.

I can see a single transfer to a secondary, but why more than one transfer?

If you are at 1.010 you are probably good to bottle but I would also think that your airlock should not be bubbling. Was this right after moving the beer to secondary or moving the vessel which can cause some C02 to come out?

 

[Aaronh2500]

I guess the reason I transferred it more than once was to make sure I kept all of the "junk" out of the bottles.

It continued to bubble 3 days after I transferred it.

 

[Yooper]

Don't worry too much about the "junk". It'll all settle to the bottom, so there's no need to transfer multiple times. I like to let it sit at least 10 days before racking (siphoning) it at all. Sometimes it sits much longer. Still, the result is simply clearer beer. If you let it sit, and rack above the trub, then you'll be fine.