Hot answers tagged bottling
19
OxyClean. The stuff works wonders. Fill a bucket with a scoop of OxyClean and hot water and let the bottles soak for about an hour. Most labels will simply slide right off; some will even float right off the bottles to the surface. The ones that don't will be easy to remove with a rag or sponge.
You also generally never want to use dish soap or detergent on ...
15
Well you carbonate the beer in the keg the same way as if you were going to serve from the keg. There is no carbonation procedure on the way into the bottle.
To get carbonated beer into the bottles however, the cheapest way to do it is to jam some 3/8ths inch tubing onto the end of your picnic tap. Using about an 12 inch piece of tubing you can put the ...
13
Because of the grooves for the cap to actually twist off, there's nowhere near enough for the lids to clamp onto. The regular lids and capping tools are all geared toward the nice, thick lip of glass on "regular" bottles.
While you might "sort of" get a seal on a twist-off, it's a ticking time bomb before it leaks and your beer spoils/oxygenates, or just ...
13
This often happens for 1 of 2 reasons:
The first is that you've bottle too soon, as @LoganGoesPlaces suggests. This means the yeast has not finished consuming the sugar in the beer and continues to do so in the bottle which releases more co2 that the bottle can handle. You can know if the fermentation is complete by measuring the Original Gravity and the ...
13
You should only aerate before the yeast have had a chance to really get going, so that they can consume all of the oxygen that's in suspension. It's really too late now, and will likely result in oxidized flavors. The yeast should be fine for carbonating your beer with simply the priming sugar, though.
11
I found this online a while ago and have done it this way ever since:
Filling from a Keg:
1.Keg of beer must be chilled and carbonated. I like to over carbonate by a few tenths (0.2) of a volume of CO2 to compensate for lost CO2. (some of that lost CO2 is a good thing as I’ll state later)
2.I use a black Cobra/Picnic tap to dispense the beer from. I ...
11
You will have bottle bombs.
Luckily for you it's not too late, but you're in for some careful work.
Sanitize a fermenter and airlock.
Fill a bucket or tub with sanitizer.
Put the bottles in the bucket to sanitize the outside. Sanitize your bottle opener.
Uncap them and carefully pour their contents into the fermenter. Do not splash. Sanitize your bottle ...
11
There are two parts - carbonation, and getting it in the bottles.
For carbonation, there are various methods, but I use the set-it-and-forget-it method. Beer goes in keg, keg goes in fridge, CO2 gas gets put on keg. Just set the pressure to the amount of CO2 you want in solution - "volumes" of CO2 - based on the style of beer and a handy temperature / ...
10
If you're using normal caps, you can boil or sanitize. I wouldn't follow the advice of boiling them with the priming solution though, if only because the caps would get sugary and sticky.
If you're uncertain about whether to boil or sanitize, why not handle them the same way that you handled your bottles. After all, the beer is going to be in greater ...
10
There is nothing wrong with using carbonation drops. There are some advantages.
They give you a very consistent carbonation from bottle to bottle. Uneven priming sugar mix in the bottling bucket (forgetting to stir it without adding oxygen) can lead to uneven carbonation. Bottle bombs and weak/no carbonation.
You never forget to add them, which ...
10
It depends on the beer and the storage conditions. To start, the stronger and hoppier the beer, the longer it will keep. For instance, a hefeweizen won't keep as long as a barleywine. The temperature is also important. Generally, cooler is better. The main thing is to avoid excessively high (85+) temps. Avoiding temp swings helps, but it's mainly high ...
10
The caps are not perfectly smooth - they contain nucleation points, imperfections or dirt along the surface, where a bubble could form (similar to how boils are formed at nucleation points when heating water). As the cold water heats up, dissolved gasses are forced out of solution. Some of this gas dissipates, but some of it will attach to the nucleation ...
9
I can't think of a reason the drops would be more consistent than sugar, assuming you prime the whole batch and not each bottle. Personally, I've found the drops less reliable. And sugar is much less expensive. I still have drops I've never used because I was so dissatisfied with the results when I tried them.
9
DO NOT put them in the fridge after three days. You'll want to store the newly bottled beer at around 70 degrees for a few weeks. Since you are bottle conditioning, the yeast will need time to carbonate the beer. If you put the beer in the fridge now, the yeast will drop out before it finishes eating the priming sugar, and you'll have flat beer.
With ...
9
Is your IPA in the bottles any good? Is the carbonation OK? If so, then do not do this, or you risk ruining the beer.
Moving the beer from bottles to a keg introduces a great deal of oxygen into the beer, which will dramatically shorten the shelf life of the brew and possibly introduce off flavors pretty quickly.
Having said that, I actually did this ...
8
There is only one real answer, absent any off smells or flavors and that's too many fermentables. Infections can cause gushers too, but there would be other signs.
You are either adding too much priming sugar (corn sugar, DME, what have you) or you are not letting your beers reach terminal gravity, which is the point when they go dormant due to lack of ...
8
For a 12-oz bottle, I fill it all the way to the top with the bottling wand. The amount of liquid displaced when I pull out the wand is about 2 inches from the top. For larger 22-oz bottles, I fill it a little less, but still keep approximately 2 inches of head space from the top. I've never had a problem with the lids blowing off or low carbonation. ...
7
Yes; I'd say they do.
Even when capping on foam, you're still going to end up with some O2 in the bottles. This usually isn't enough to turn a beer bad, but depending on how long you're planning to age the beer it can make a difference. I'd always use oxygen-absorbing caps on higher gravity beers like barleywines and imperial stouts that I plan to keep in ...
7
This is one of the reasons I'm glad I keg my beer now. I had this happen a bunch of times when I used to bottle.
From what I've always heard, it is most likely due to either a.) Too much priming sugar, or b.) Too many fermentable sugars left--in other words, fermentation wasn't complete.
Another cause could be bacterial infection, but my sanitation was ...
7
There certainly isn't any harm on doing it at bottling. You just don't want to do it prior to bottling. Adding straight water to the beer might oxidize the beer. I'd just recommend that you boil the water for a good 15 minutes first to drive off any oxygen that's in the water. If you don't then that O2 will mix and oxidize the beer. I'd boil for 15, ...
7
Somewhat. Lack of carbonation can really alter the flavor, but you should be able to pick out major characteristics or flaws in the beer. But I wouldn't advise reaching any real conclusions until the beer is carbed and has an appropriate conditioning time. That time will vary from beer to beer.
7
Add it at bottling or kegging. The flavoring does not need to sit for a prolonged period if you do not add too much so adding it to the secondary would be redundant. The time in the bottles to carbonate should be plenty of time to get what you are looking for.
A tip for the amount to add:
Take a 1/2 pint and drop some of the flavoring in and taste, add a ...
6
For removing your own labels that you apply to your bottles, use a label with a hot-soak water soluable adhesive. When you're ready to reuse your bottles, a soak in hot water is all that's needed to slide the labels off.
Removing labels from store-bought beverage bottles can be hit or miss because each bottler can use different label materials and different ...
6
I have almost exclusively used twist off bottles. I have never had any issues with any of them.
They are generally well carbonated (I blame myself for any issues there), and I haven't noticed any major off flavours from my bottles.
The capper that I use was one that came in a kit from a local brewshop and I don't think it's anything special.
My ...
6
I recommend over carbing a little in the keg to help make up for losses.
Chill your bottles down to help minimize the loss.
And don't pour!!! You can retrofit a bottle filler onto the end of some beer line and fill like that from a bev out connector.
You can also jam a peice of tubing like on a standard racking cane (3/8ths??) into a cobra tap. Make it as ...
6
I'd give it another week or two before opening any more. Sometimes you need 3 - 6 weeks to get full carbonation.
That said, you may not have used enough priming sugar. Using this priming sugar calculator can help in future batches: http://www.tastybrew.com/calculators/priming.html
(There could be other problems, but this is the most likely one. Other ...
6
The 2 handle capper is what i've been using for years. It works just fine, I haven't had any problems with it. It's very cheap and less annoying than the hammer on capper. I will eventually move to the bench capper, but my brew equipment is taking up enough space as it is. I would definitely recommend the jump to the 2 handle capper.
6
If you're bottling into different-sized bottles, then priming the whole batch with sugar is going to give you more consistentcy from bottle to bottle. If you use 1 drop in your 12-ounce bottles, either choice of using 1 or 2 drops in your 16's will make them differently-carb'd from your 12's. You could come closer with "prime tabs", which had a greater ...
6
If the latter batch had about half of the bottles uncarbonated like you mentioned "but the other has about half the bottles with no activity" then it sounds like the sugar solution and beer did not get mixed thoroughly and therefore the ones that didnt have enough of the sugar solution did not carbonate. To avoid this I put the sugar solution in my bottling ...
6
Depending on how healthy the yeast were at bottling, and the temperature that your beer has been at since you bottled, you might not see carbonation yet.
From personal experience, I bottled a batch of beer right before moving out of state, and during the move, I let the freshly-bottled beer get too chilly. At 3 weeks, that beer had only a slight ...
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