Travel with carboys?

[gurrback]

I've got a two-part question for everyone this morning.


1. A friend and I are "brew mates" and have been making beer in his parents back yard/shed all summer long. Now he's moving and won't have a yard at his new place. Because of the lack of appropriate brewing space we will still meet up once a month at his parents house for double brew days. However, for a few reasons we can't leave the fermenters at his parents house while we're in separate cities. So, we are thinking that we will brew and bring the carboys (without yeast) approx. 1.5 hours down the road to my apartment, then add the yeast upon arrival.

My question is do you see any harm in having the beer shaking around a bit in the backseat, assuming we don't leave it there for an extended period of time? I figure that adding the yeast and then tranporting would be an issue so we'll add the yeast after the trip.


2. This is related to the first question. We had just bottled a batch of beer that day and I brought 4 on the bus with me back home. They ended up moving around quite a bit during the ride and the bottles feel a lot harder than they should be after 24hrs. Should I be concerned for any reason?

 

[Tomcat]

You shouldn't have any problems as long as you wait til you get to your destination before pitching the yeast

 

[Revvy]

I would pitch yeast before you leave. Why leave your beer yeastless during that time period?


You don't need to over stress/over think this....See this?

This is national homebrew day, it takes place twice a year at HUNDREDS of homebrew shops across the country, where HUNDREDS of brewers are brewing batches of beer, and then taking them home at the end of the day. In cars (not by levitation )

Unless they are doing no-chill brewing everybody pitches their yeast before leaving the various sites.

And since we all come back, noone's ruined a batch of beer by transporting it.

It's safer to do it at that point, then any other part of the fermentation process. You'll get plenty of aeration, your yeast won't be harmed, it will get thoroughly mixed with the wort, the yeast has the best chance of taking hold before anything bad gets in, AND when fermentation happens it would clean up anything that might have happened during transit.

Just stop worrying, brew your beer and pitch your yeast, it will be fine.

Whenever I want to brew full batch all grain I have to travel someplace to do so, since I don't have a yard or anything. So I brew with friends, so nearly EVERY batch I brew I pitch yeast and drive home. I've driven over 60 miles with fermenters with pitched yeast, and never had ANY issues.