WTF am I doing wrong??!!!

[ncbrewer]

You can fill the bottles to about 1/2" below the rim. That reduces headspace. Some leave even less space, but I don't want to risk breaking bottles. If you leave no headspace or too little, the bottle could break when it gets warmer.
I compared the color of two beers from the same batch, poured into glasses - one with 2" headspace and one with 1/2". The one with 1/2" was a little lighter. Not a huge difference, but lighter.

 

[Unicorn_Platypus]

"Don't fear the foam."

I fear disolved oxygen in the foam LOL

For any vessels post primary fermentation (kegs/bottles) I always use Saniclean.. Basically no foaming starsan

Lately I've also been adding 2g of SMB per 5 gallons of sanitizer to gulp up the DO in my tap water

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

a question based on this

store my bottles in a dark place at room temp for a couple of weeks.

Has anyone else tried bottle conditioning warm (say 75F) with a bottle conditioning yeast (e.g. CBC-1) to speed up the conditioning process?

If yes, what did you find?

If no, informed speculation may be interesting (or not).

---

eta: the idea is 1) bottle condition it (properly and) as fast as practical, then 2) store it in the fridge to help preserve it.

 

[SRJHops]

a question based on this



Has anyone else tried bottle conditioning warm (say 75F) with a bottle conditioning yeast (e.g. CBC-1) to speed up the conditioning process?

If yes, what did you find?

If no, informed speculation may be interesting (or not).

---

eta: the idea is 1) bottle condition it (properly and) as fast as practical, then 2) store it in the fridge to help preserve it.

I bottle condition at 75-80 and have used bottling yeast not to speed up conditioning, but to ensure it happens for really big beers like quads. Philly Sour also requires bottling yeast. There is an online calculator to help estimate how much you need - it's never the entire packet. But the yeast does work.

 

[Zambezi Special]

No bottle yeast, but conditioning is fairly warm. Seems fine by me
Conditioning is in a coolerbox to lessen temperature swings.
Other than that, it depends on outside temperature as I got no heating and no aircon.
Est temp 25-28 oC (77-80 F)

 

[thefigure5]

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/thread...dspace-o2-in-a-bottle-conditioned-ipa.653784/
The link above is a long but good conversation mostly about effectively reducing oxidation for brewers who bottle their beer, especially but not strictly in hoppy beers. Eventually, the methods that follow are presented:

1. Purging the bottle headspace with Private Preserve or similar, or just CO2
2. Minimizing the bottle headspace to about 0.5"
3. The inclusion of vitamin C, i.e., ascorbic acid, at a rate of 0.6 gram per gallon of beer

(The original poster, Taket_al_Tauro, adds the ascorbic acid 4-5 days before bottling when dry hopping, also adding sugar at the rate of 1.0 oz. per 7.0 gallons of beer in order to purge air from the fermenter headspace by reactivating fermentation.)

In various experiments, the three methods are used alone or in combination with one or more of the others. Each method appears to be effective on it's own, but combining methods provides some insurance that the effects of oxidation will be minimized.

 

[Unicorn_Platypus]

I add as much as 6g ascorbic acid at dry hopping. No perceptible flavor difference.

skip the starsan as the foam has dissolved oxygen. Use saniclean (non-foaming starsan) instead and add 2g (per 5 gallons) sodium metabisulfite to the saniziter. The SMB will scavenge any oxygen from the tap water in the sanitizer.

minimizing headspace the best call for bottles. Really though you should switch to kegging and closed xfers if you are serious about making hoppy beers. You can then get a counterpressure filler like a "tapcooler" to fill bottles when needed. These do basically a full purge

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

minimizing headspace the best call for bottles.

With PET bottles, no worries (so far).

With glass bottles, I've seen a couple of anecdotal stories reporting cracked bottles when packaging with reduced head space.

YMMV.

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

@SRJHops , @Zambezi Special : when bottle conditioning warm (but no additional yeast), how long did it take for the bottles to carbonate?

---

eta: looks like this topic may be entering the "... switch to _____ if you are serious about ___ " phase.

Before I take go back to lurking here, a round of visual +1s to a number of you who offered ideas on minimizing / mitigating oxidation during bottling and in upstream steps.
Now, where's the ?

 

[mac_1103]

Foam is bubbles. Oxygen inside bubbles is not dissolved in the liquid, sort of by definition. There will be dissolved oxygen in a non-foaming sanitizer too. So I'm not sure I get blaming Starsan for oxidation. Has anyone actually done a comparison?

 

[BigDave1303]

I brew 23L batches & closed transfer 18.5L from my GF conical into a co2 purged keg (co2 captured during fermentation). The remaining 2-3L I bottle using a bottling wand into flip top bottles. The whole batch is crash chilled before packaging, kegged beer is put straight into my Kegerator & remains chilled throughout, and the bottles are primed with a small amount of granulated sugar then left at room temperature to condition for 2-4 weeks before going into my beer fridge. I notice there is a definite difference between the kegged & bottled beer. The Kegged beer is brighter in flavour & aroma. The bottles tend to be duller & less hoppier. I have always put this down to oxidation in the bottling process.

 

[dmtaylor]

Foam is bubbles. Oxygen inside bubbles is not dissolved in the liquid, sort of by definition. There will be dissolved oxygen in a non-foaming sanitizer too. So I'm not sure I get blaming Starsan for oxidation. Has anyone actually done a comparison?

Foam is surface area for oxygen to soak into and then to fall back into the main beer. It's an intriguing hypothesis which I hadn't considered previously.

 

[Zambezi Special]

@SRJHops , @Zambezi Special : when bottle conditioning warm (but no additional yeast), how long did it take for the bottles to carbonate?

---

eta: looks like this topic may be entering the "... switch to _____ if you are serious about ___ " phase.

Before I take go back to lurking here, a round of visual +1s to a number of you who offered ideas on minimizing / mitigating oxidation during bottling and in upstream steps.
Now, where's the ?

Some look/feel done in 3-4 days (kveik voss).
I haven't had any beer take longer than 7 days

 

[troxerX]

I’ve been bottling all my beers for 12+ years (mostly IPAs and New England IPAs) and I know the frustrating sentiment very well - an awesome bright hoppy ale that after couple days in bottles now looks like blended with Arizona iced tea and tastes nothing like that first sample out of the carboy.

IMO this is one of the biggest gaps for new homebrewers that start homebrewing IPAs and the reason why many quit as they are never able to produce good IPAs when compared to commercial examples when in fact they are making awesome IPAs but don’t realize they are oxidizing them. We all see the many videos in YouTube showing you how to bottle but don’t teach you how to keep O2 out of the process. The bottling videos might work for many beer styles but when it comes to the mighty IPA and it’s hazy cousin they are all garbage.

Based on my experience what the OP is describing is just oxidation. It doesn’t matter if using bottling bucket or straight into the bottle as long as there’s air involved the beer will suffer to the extent of how much air and oxygen gets dissolved. Some will think that straight to the bottle is ok but I have tried that with same results, reason is that when the beer is being filled, the beer swirls on the bottom thus dissolving the air that’s already inside the bottle - straight to the bottle may lead to less air dissolving but there will always be some damage - and same applies for headspace - air and oxygen will always dissolve, more headspace more damage but still there will be damage. Straight to the bottle works best if the bottle is flushed with CO2 prior to being filled with beer and headspace flushed with CO2 right before dropping the cap.

Few options I will suggest for the OP:

1) if you don’t have patience, start kegging - best option to reduce oxidation but worst option if you are planning on sharing beers (see option 2 for sharing)

2) after learning to keg, you can get a beer gun that allows purging bottles with CO2

3) what I decided many years ago - make you own custom equipment to keep O2 away from the beer, it’s too long to explain here but I built a line with a tap handle that I connect to my CO2 tank thus allowing me to spray and fill my bottling bucket with CO2 before transferring the beer and also allows me to spray each bottle prior to filling and right before dropping the cap. Very tedious process that’s not for everybody but does work very well for me.

 

[ncbrewer]

With glass bottles, I've seen a couple of anecdotal stories reporting cracked bottles when packaging with reduced head space.

I haven't seen these reports. Do you remember if the broken bottles were filled completely to the top, or maybe too close to the top? And whether they were explosions (major safety concern) or just cracked, allowing beer to run out?

 

[troxerX]

For option 3, I will suggest using Brewers Best conditioning tablets placed on each bottle in order to avoid having to agitate the beer to dissolve any priming sugar.

 

[thefigure5]

3) what I decided many years ago - make you own custom equipment to keep O2 away from the beer, it’s too long to explain here but I built a line with a tap handle that I connect to my CO2 tank thus allowing me to spray and fill my bottling bucket with CO2 before transferring the beer and also allows me to spray each bottle prior to filling and right before dropping the cap. Very tedious process that’s not for everybody but does work very well for me.

Over on Limiting oxidation: effect of purging headspace O2 in a bottle conditioned IPA it is suggested that the main culprit of oxidation in home-brewed bottled beer is the O2 in the headspace of the bottle. If not minimized, the leftover O2 is qualitatively shown to oxidize the bottled beer in the days and weeks after carbonation has completed.

You are certainly minimizing oxidation during the short span of time of transfer and bottling, as well as after the bottle is sealed. Do you have a sense for the benefit of spraying the CO2 to purge air from the bottling bucket and the bottles as compared to just spraying CO2 to purge air from the headspace of the bottles?

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

Do you remember if the broken bottles were filled completely to the top, or maybe too close to the top? And whether they were explosions (major safety concern) or just cracked, allowing beer to run out?

IIRC, the bottles were just cracked (and beer leaked out).

 

[troxerX]

Over on Limiting oxidation: effect of purging headspace O2 in a bottle conditioned IPA it is suggested that the main culprit of oxidation in home-brewed bottled beer is the O2 in the headspace of the bottle. It not minimized, the leftover O2 is qualitatively shown to oxidize the bottled beer in the days and weeks after carbonation has completed.

You are certainly minimizing oxidation during the short span of time of transfer and bottling, as well as after the bottle is sealed. Do you have a sense for the benefit of spraying the CO2 to purge air from the bottling bucket and the bottles as compared to just spraying CO2 to purge air from the headspace of the bottles?

Over on Limiting oxidation: effect of purging headspace O2 in a bottle conditioned IPA it is suggested that the main culprit of oxidation in home-brewed bottled beer is the O2 in the headspace of the bottle. It not minimized, the leftover O2 is qualitatively shown to oxidize the bottled beer in the days and weeks after carbonation has completed.

You are certainly minimizing oxidation during the short span of time of transfer and bottling, as well as after the bottle is sealed. Do you have a sense for the benefit of spraying the CO2 to purge air from the bottling bucket and the bottles as compared to just spraying CO2 to purge air from the headspace of the bottles?

I’m not related to the thread however I might think it all boils down to surface area and time of exposure. Since bottling takes time to complete, exposing the beer to air by transferring into the bottling bucket will have an impact due to the initial agitation/recirculation of the beer, the time it sits there and large surface area of the beer being exposed. When it comes to filling the bottles, it’s about the surface area of the beer - when you are filling you will notice that as the beer shoots out radially it swirls when it sees the wall of the bottle, as it does this, air in the bottle is forced by agitation into the beer for the first few seconds. When it comes to the headspace, it’s all about time since the surface of the beer is very small there. I think if we were to experiment by skipping different steps you will see oxidation showing at different times with the headspace being probably the one that will take the longest but there will always be some damage. If I’m putting so much effort I will prefer leaving no chance for air to ruin my batch in any step. I do all this without the help of any substance (anti oxidants like ascorbic acid etc) but I have to admit is a very tedious process I know for sure not everyone will be up to. My easiest setup was when I bottled straight out of an SS bucket where I only purged the bottles with CO2 (before filling and headspace before dropping the cap) and sporadically sprayed CO2 into the bucket through the hole where the airlock was set. Reason to spray the bucket is since as the beer level falls air is being sucked in to avoid vacuum so spraying CO2 helps keeps a blanket above the beer, CO2 weights more than air so it will still protect althought there will always be some mixing. Also I use Brewers Best tabs (usually 4 per bottle) to avoid having to deal with priming sugar.

 

[DBhomebrew]

CO2 helps keeps a blanket above the beer, CO2 weights more than air so it will still protect

Lots of fauna living within 6' of the ground. Plenty of oxygen there for respiration.

 

[troxerX]

These are pictures of my SS bucket setup and one of the beers. I always use the dishwasher door as my working surface and when bottling is complete I just close the door and clean up the mess. As to cleaning the bottles, I run them in the dishwasher with a high temp cycle (with little bit of cascade), once the cycle is over I spray them with starsan and return them to the rack to let them dry. I could clean them by hand with a brush but I’ll rather let the machine do its job. After an hour drying I start bottling. In the setup I use now I have a bottling bucket since I don’t brew larger volumes anymore.

 

[mac_1103]

Reason to spray the bucket is since as the beer level falls air is being sucked in to avoid vacuum so spraying CO2 helps keeps a blanket above the beer, CO2 weights more than air so it will still protect althought there will always be some mixing.

Why not just capture five gallons of fermentation gas in a balloon and hook that up to the airlock grommet? I can't imagine that an intermittent spritz of CO2 is doing you all that much good.

 

[thefigure5]

These are pictures of my SS bucket setup and one of the beers. I always use the dishwasher door as my working surface and when bottling is complete I just close the door and clean up the mess. As to cleaning the bottles, I run them in the dishwasher with a high temp cycle (with little bit of cascade), once the cycle is over I spray them with starsan and return them to the rack to let them dry. I could clean them by hand with a brush but I’ll rather let the machine do its job. After an hour drying I start bottling. In the setup I use now I have a bottling bucket since I don’t brew larger volumes anymore.

Thanks for sending pictures of your setup. Looking at it I wonder if it would help to have a second regulator in series with the one you use to spray CO2, and have the second regulator set really low and use it to lightly pressurize the bottling bucket. That way no air would be drawn in as the level of beer dropped during bottling. Coincidentally, I use a smaller SS brew bucket as a bottling bucket.

[I also see @mac_1103's interesting suggestion.]

Here is where I need others with more knowledge to confirm or refute, but if the yeast is active, my limited understanding is that the yeast itself acts as an antioxidant and uses up O2 that gets into the beer. If that's true, it's mainly after the beer is bottled and the yeast is finished with the priming sugar that the remaining O2 in the bottle's headspace has a chance to slowly creep in and do its damage.

I realize that transferring the beer to the bottling bucket and mixing in the priming sugar mixture as I do may not immediately rouse the yeast. Until the yeast gets going, some oxidation could occur in my bottling/conditioning process.

 

[troxerX]

Why not just capture five gallons of fermentation gas in a balloon and hook that up to the airlock grommet? I can't imagine that an intermittent spritz of CO2 is doing you all that much good.

LOL, It’s not a spritz, it’s actually a good amount of CO2 that I spray every 10 mins or so.. it will be awesome if you can isolate a good amount of fermentation gas and will save you some $$$, my method is well set and don’t want to explore any options for now though

 

[mac_1103]

You're still letting ten minutes worth of air in between CO2 doses. Is there something that I'm missing about your method that keeps you from streaming the CO2 continuously?

 

[troxerX]

Thanks for sending pictures of your setup. Looking at it I wonder if it would help to have a second regulator in series with the one you use to spray CO2, and have the second regulator set really low and use it to lightly pressurize the bottling bucket. That way no air would be drawn in as the level of beer dropped during bottling. Coincidentally, I use a smaller SS brew bucket as a bottling bucket.

[I also see @mac_1103's interesting suggestion.]

Here is where I need others with more knowledge to confirm or refute, but if the yeast is active, my limited understanding is that the yeast itself acts as an antioxidant and uses up O2 that gets into the beer. If that's true, it's mainly after the beer is bottled and the yeast is finished with the priming sugar that the remaining O2 in the bottle's headspace has a chance to slowly creep in and do its damage.

I realize that transferring the beer to the bottling bucket and mixing in the priming sugar mixture as I do may not immediately rouse the yeast. Until the yeast gets going, some oxidation could occur in my bottling/conditioning process.

A second line with its own separate valve will be a great idea to pressurize the SS bucket, that will be a near perfect setup.

After so many years I tried a lot of variations and I can say after multiple times that you do not want to bottle with an active yeast.. when you bottle like that the beer will foam too much and then make bottling too difficult.. not to mention the risk of bottle bombs and or bottle gushers due to potential excess of fermentables (unfinished fermented wort + carb tabs) etc since an unfinished wort will put you in an unsure territory.. I don’t recall any of the beers being oxidized due to the foaming but it makes hell of a frustrating process. If you follow a good CO2 blanket in principle you should not have to worry about the yeast being active as long as it’s viable and ready to do it’s job when in the bottle.

 

[troxerX]

You're still letting ten minutes worth of air in between CO2 doses. Is there something that I'm missing about your method that keeps you from streaming the CO2 continuously?

It’s an approximate, I say 10 mins but it could be 7 or 8, I usually spray the bucket with CO2 at about every 4 bottles so it could vary. The way I do it works for me with no issues but continuous CO2 will be much better for sure.

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

the yeast itself acts as an antioxidant and uses up O2 that gets into the beer.

I've see this idea from from a couple of people (outside of HomeBrewTalk) who keg, bottle from kegs, and bottle condition. This idea (and an extra package of CBC-1 yeast) was the inspiration for trying warmer (75F) and shorter (about a week) bottle conditioning. If I continue with the idea, my next step would be to brew a 24 pack and sample them over three or four months.

 

[Jamafrica brewer]

Just a question, but perhaps the recipe needs to be looked at. I know for myself that when I taste my beers pre-bottle conditioning I find them to be very sharp and way too hoppy. But then after the bottle conditioning and relevant carbonation it mellows out into a drinkable and enjoyable beer. I could never see myself enjoying an unfermented beer because I feel the bottle conditioning/ carbonation process is part of the flavour profile that is so important to the beer which will have an impact on the end flavour profile.
This is also so true of many beer styles which require different carbonation levels to bring about the correct and best flavour from the beer.

Also perhaps change to capped bottles and see if you still have the same problem.

Also, when filling your bottles with your filling wand, fill it so that the liquid reaches the top of the bottle rim to basically the point of overflowing. When you remove the wand the resultant head space will be perfect.
Too much head space is bad. (I once tried it to see if it was a real thing and filled a bottle halfway. After the conditioning period I opened a full bottle and it was delicious, I opened the half-filled bottle and it was undrinkable.)

 

[DBhomebrew]

Also, when filling your bottles with your filling wand, fill it so that the liquid reaches the top of the bottle rim to basically the point of overflowing. When you remove the wand the resultant head space will be perfect.

That would depend on the model of bottle wand and the type of bottle.

For example, one wand can't give perfect headroom to both a 12oz long neck and a 12oz stubby. The percentage of volume taken by the wand are different.

I've got a stainless wand that leaves nearly the whole neck of a 12oz long neck empty. In a 750 Grolsch it's at a typical level.