For those with experience and time to give I am all ears!
Recently bought a couple of starter kits ( based in NZ) and am keen to refine the lagers / beer I have so far brewed.
The kits are 25 litre plastic bins with taps about 1 inch up from the bottom. To stop all the stuff that has settled on the bottom of the bin from entering the bottles.
Setup primary fermentation with the treacle like gunk in the cans, yeast etc and everything appears to have gone well.
Bottled it after around 7 days once the fermentation had stopped and dropped a couple of priming sugar cubes into each bottle. This I was told was for secondary fermentation to put bubbles into the beer.
Just opened a bottle and all looks good so am quite happy. However......
From this group I have read about secondary fermentation taking place in another plastic bucket, i.e racking from a primary to the secondary bucket? What or why is this done? The instructions I had were clear in that I was told to bottle it for secondary fermentation.
The beer inside the bottles has carbonated ( secondary fermentation ?? ). If I was to let this process take place inside another plastic tub, would the CO2 escape back through the airlock ie. flat beer??
Would I then bottle it from the second bucket as opposed to after the first??
Appreciate this may appear basic but any tips or pointers gratefully appreciated
I've got some time but little experience. But I'll chime in with what I have gleened from several months reading this and many other boards. :)
This is correct (for the most part - the 7 days in the primary seems short though). The sugar in the bottle will work with what little yeast is left in suspension to carbonate the beer in the bottle. This is more commonly referred to as "Conditioning" rather than secondary fermenting. The terminology is what I think is tripping you up. After you "ferment" your beer (primary and/or secondary) you "condition" the beer in the bottle so the beer carbonates (Fermentation is not the step that carbonates, in fact it releases, by necessity, CO2). There are two types of conditioning, Warm and Cold. Normally you warm condition the beer for a couple of weeks (And this depends on the style of beer) then, again, depending on the style of beer you can "cold condition" (i.e. move it to the refrigerator) for serving.
Then that's what counts :-)
That is correct. Secondary fermentation happens in another bucket or carboy after the "original" burst of fermentation. You would usually (and this depends on style of beer again) primary during the initial phase of the process, usually the first 5 - 10 days (and I've seen opinions on this all over the spectrum) then rack the beer over to the secondary for another 7 to
10 days.
That is the million dollar question. You'll get half the people telling you that you really only need to primary (which is what you did - though if you only go with a primary step you usually do it for 10 to 14 days in total which is the reason I said 7 seems short to me and what I've read) and others that claim they get a better result with the secondary step. Now there is one major reason why I plan on moving my first Red Ale to a secondary in a day or two (I'll be 7 days in then and I plan to let it ferment for 14 days or so in total). To help clarify the beer, and retrieve the yeast out of the primary for reuse. Racking to the secondary will let me leave some of the grain husks and hop residue that made it past my strainer (which I had to improvise and I plan on revising for my next batch) into my primary and will leave the yeast cake on the bottom (I use an autosyphen for this process). We'll see how it goes.
Again, I think it is just a "terminology" usage. It IS fermenting in the bottles afterall, that is how it is being pressurized with CO2. So if you only used a primary fermentation process it would, I guess, technically, be a secondary ferment. But if you used a "traditional" secondary fermenting process that would be a tertiary ferment. Which is the reason I just think that the term "conditioning" is the more appropriately used terminology in this sense
Conditioned ;-)
Yes. If you used a "traditional" secondary ferment and went right to a bottle without adding your priming sugar you'd probably have very flat beer or beer that might take months to carbonate if any sugars where left for the yeast to act on.
I will bottle from a bottling bucket. I will move my beer from the secondary to the bucket (which I will add priming sugar solution to instead of the tablets you used) and bottle from there.
Hopefully from one newbie to another I have answered some questions and fully realize I'll probably be corrected along the line as well. LOL!
Thanks for your informative reply Eric. So far very insightful and helpful..
If I may add a couple more questions...
If the fermentation in the first bucket ( primary ) has stopped after 7 days ( as mine had) - no bubbles and Specific Gravity remained the same from the 7th to 10th day....
How would transferring it into a second bucket ' kick off' another stage of fermentation?
Also, is it possible to have the bottled beer sediment free...
bottom of the original fermenting bin and after ' conditioning' the bottled beer for several weeks it pours out beautifully clear into a pint glass..Unfortunately the half pint left inside the 750 ml bottles then sloshes back into the sediment at the bottom of the bottle and I end up with a somewhat cloudy looking lager. Apart from locating a huge glass that will take 95% of the bottle in one pour, does filtering the beer/ lager work well or does it remove taste, nutrients to continue conditioning etc
Depending on a number of factors- the yeast used, the starting gravity, the temperature, the size of the yeast colony pitched, how much fermentable sugar is left in the wort, the action of transferring to the secondary may "rouse" the yeast and cause them to work a little more...if there is some sugar left to work on.
Sure, if you filter it, keg it, force carbonate it and use a counter-pressure filler to bottle it. That's just too much for me- if I were to keg it I wouldn't bother putting it in bottles after.
Use smaller bottles or decant to a pitcher in a single pour. If you do not pour out the entire bottle in a single pour, no matter what size it is, whatever is left will disturb the sediment when you turn the bottle upright. I actually have some mugs that will hold pretty near 2 liters of beer but I generally don't dring that much at one time so they rarely get used.
If you filter prior to bottling, depending on how efficient your filter is you could remove most or all of the yeasties...and it could take a very long time to carbonate, if it did at all...which brings you back to kegging and force-carbonating...unless you like flat beer.
Hope you read Zaphod's response as it covers almost all your questions probably better than I as a newbie would. Would like to make a couple inline comments thought. If you don't mind (and, again, I fully suspect someone better will come along and correct me at some point. LOL).
Zaphod answer is right. The other point. Just because bubbling has "stopped" doesn't necessarillay mean that fermentation has gone "completely" dormant (though your SG would indicate maybe it had). From what I have read on this from others is that, many "rush" to bottle to quickly. In other words, if you think it has "stopped" don't worry about giving it an extra day or two. It isn't going to hurt, for the most part, unless air is getting in somehow. But if you have an airlock on the thing let the last of the yeast settle out. That will also help "clarify" your beer (especially if you move to a secondary). Again, this is a point of contention with many.
No. LOL! Well, sort of. I'll address this inline in a minute.
Ok. I'll admit I had to read this part many times before I finally understood what you meant (and maybe still don't). but going back to the original post it appears you fermented in a "bottling bucket" and went right to the bottles from that vessel (or a "primary" that had a drain attached). If I am not right here let me know because I would guess that is the "problem" (and I agree with Zephod here too that it is not much of a problem as what you were ingesting is yeast and in the "old days" that was actually served with the beer.).
If you fermented in a bucket and then bottled from that then the "distance" between the bottom of the bucket and your yeast was not great enough to "not" stir them up and move them into the bottles (creating sediment - and also a great conditioning environment. I'm surprised you haven't exploded some.). Not a bad thing necessarily (yeast is fine to eat and I wouldn't worry about it), but this is the reason why you usually always move out of the primary to a separate bottling bucket for bottling - to leave the yeast cake behind and intact. If you primary in only one bucket, which is perfectly fine to do, then you should probably not bottle from the same bucket. This is, most likely, the reason most homebrew kits come with a primary bucket (without a spigot but with a fermentation lock) and a bottling bucket (with a spigot). the racking process between the two is going to eliminate some of the sediment in any case.
This is probably why you have sediment in all your bottles. But I could be reading what your saying wrong. What concerns me more is that it may be a lager that you only fermented for only 7 days (and you didn't state the temperature)! :-^
Considering it was a lager, it should have gone into a secondary for a while at a low temp, plus the diacetyl rest at a slightly higher temp, before being bottled.
Lagers are a bit more complicated than ales and call for a fairly long secondary at cold temps where many ales might not see a secondary at all (though I usually do it for them). The long, cold lager process would help to reduce the amount of yeast in suspension. Using finings would help to reduce it further but then you run the risk of not having enough yeast left to carbonate- not a problem if you are going to keg and force carbonate but it could screw you if you want to bottle and carbonate naturally.
His question seemed to be more of a general nature, so I didn't go into so many details in my response.
You both might want to start looking at the rec.crafts.brewing group- there are many more people there, and many of them much more knowledgeable than I am, especially with lagers, kegging, and whole-grain brewing. I mainly do ales, meads and wine.
It is a great resource for the beninning brewer and even up through intermediate and advanced brewing. I suggest you reasd through the online book there and feel free to post any questions or clarifications you have.
Thanks a bundle for all the information. The primary fermenter is a 25 litre plastic bin (food grade ) with a tight fitting snaplid and an airlock in the lid. It has a small tap about 1 inch from the bottom of the bucket so it does leave the yeast cake behind after bottling. You clip the bottling attachment ( 8 inch long pipe with a pushvalve on the end) to the tap and slide the bottle up over it. The bottom of the botttle activates the valve and it fills from the bottom up.
Interestingly enough I have been reading heaps of info and most of the kit 'lagers' I can find in the local shops all ferment at around the 18 to 24 degrees c mark for 5 to 7 days.
I have just purchased a different kit, ( brewmaster premium) and using saflager s23 yeast ( lots of ice and wet towels) now have a lager bubbling away nicely at around 12 degrees c. Don't shoot me but it should taste like Stella Artois when I am finished! I 'think' this will take about 14 to 20 days to get through first stage.
Once again, thanks for your time and effort in coming back with great information
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