# My first boil is fermenting



## jswordy

My first boil is in the fermenter!





All extract, so I can mess up as little as possible the first time out.

1 - Cooper's English Bitter kit
500 mg - Amber DME
250 mg - Dark DME
1 lb - Honey

Boiled 2 gallons water, removed from heat, added Bitter kit malt.

Opened and added DME and honey into fermenter. Added 1 gallon previously boiled hot water, stirred to start dissolution.

Poured kit wort into sanitized fermenter. Stirred thoroughly. 

Added: 

1 oz - Cascade, 5 minute steep while stirring.

Chilled to 80 degrees F.

Pitched the kit yeast.

IG = 1.045; Potential alcohol = 5%

I've got a vigorous ferment going, plan to secondary for a week and then bottle, using 1 1/4 cup orange blossom honey as the carbonator (1.35 parts honey = 1 part sugar). Is that enough, or should I boost with 1/4 cup corn sugar, too?

I want to clear the beer further in secondary, but I know beer is way more prone to infection than wine. 

If I secondary in a full sanitized carboy for a week, I'll be OK, right?

Smells good to me; wifey says it smells like chemicals. All I smell is citrus. Love Cascade!


----------



## wineforfun

So off my buddy goes into the beer world. Good luck and I look forward to your progress. On your own here, as I am not a beer drinker at all.


----------



## jswordy

wineforfun said:


> So off my buddy goes into the beer world. Good luck and I look forward to your progress. On your own here, as I am not a beer drinker at all.



Nope, not going off into the beer world. I have bought zero equipment for beer; making my wine stuff do double duty. I am just curious about it.

Never fear! Before I started my boil last weekend, I bottled these!





I have 6 gallons of full-tilt, wild fermented blueberry out in my shed flocculating in the cold, as the wild yeast is not compact in lees. Very light and fluffy. Getting this to clear naturally has been a real challenge, but cold is your friend on this account, and it is working. 

I'm going to call it "1 of 1," since I will never be able to duplicate it.

And I still have a fridge full of fruit ready to ferment.


----------



## wineforfun

Atta boy, I knew you wouldn't let me down.


----------



## olusteebus

Did you use a can of extract of coopers and added the dme and other stuff. Interested in knowing how it turns out. I made an oatmeal stout last month and it is kinda ageing in the bottle. It is good.


----------



## jswordy

olusteebus said:


> Did you use a can of extract of coopers and added the dme and other stuff. Interested in knowing how it turns out. I made an oatmeal stout last month and it is kinda ageing in the bottle. It is good.



Yes, a modded Coopers English Bitter kit.

I really need to know the answers to my 2 questions at the bottom, if you know. Otherwise I will just use my best judgment.


----------



## olusteebus

I racked from primary to a secondary (carboy), primarily so that I could see if there was sediment to avoid. I would do that. 

my supplier told me to condition in the bottles for one week for every point of AVV. So, if the abv is 5%, let it stay in bottle for 5 weeks before drinking. I know for the stout, I read that it really changes in a couple of months or more.


----------



## jswordy

Thanks. This kit says to open a bottle after 2 weeks to assess carbonation. Then allow it to carbonate 1 more week, then store in the cool to slow up and stop fermentation, compact the yeast. Improves through 3 months, they say. I'll see if any survive that long.

I expect the honey to offer a fuller mouthfeel and impart flavor, especially the carbonation honey. I am just a bit unsure on quantity to use. I know 1.35 cups honey = 1 cup powdered sugar. Will have to search the Net, I guess.


----------



## BernardSmith

Beer needs to be aged at least two weeks. So a week in the primary and one in the secondary is OK. You could let it stand another week in the secondary , IMO. The secondary does not need to be full to the top as most brewers today don't use a secondary unless they have a specific reason (adding fruit and so forth) and they might brew 5 gallons in a 6 gallon carboy. (I make single gallons in a 2 gallon bucket) When I carbonate my beers I add about 20 -25 gms of sugar/gallon. 

The honey will obviously ferment dry: was that your plan? Sounds like an older recipe (adding fermentables to the DME rather than adding DME to the DME). Good luck.


----------



## jswordy

BernardSmith said:


> Beer needs to be aged at least two weeks. So a week in the primary and one in the secondary is OK. You could let it stand another week in the secondary , IMO. The secondary does not need to be full to the top as most brewers today don't use a secondary unless they have a specific reason (adding fruit and so forth) and they might brew 5 gallons in a 6 gallon carboy. (I make single gallons in a 2 gallon bucket) When I carbonate my beers I add about 20 -25 gms of sugar/gallon.
> 
> The honey will obviously ferment dry: was that your plan? Sounds like an older recipe (adding fermentables to the DME rather than adding DME to the DME). Good luck.



Thanks, Bernard. It's my recipe, but I am a little older.  

I'm in a sealed brew bucket for the primary, just looking for glass on secondary to clarify. There are no grains involved, so it should be darned clear after primary if I got the cold break I intended. I wanted to make sure I wouldn't infect it on secondary. Bet a week there would do it.

The honey leaves behind flavors. Orange blossom is what I plan to use. But then, I might wimp out and just go 4 oz. corn sugar in 5 finished gals and be done. Depends on how it tastes post-ferment. Looks like 6.3 oz. honey is required to equal that amount of sugar, if I go that way, according to an online calculator I found. That's a lot less than I thought I'd need.

Yep, I have been instructed by Cooper's to open a bottle after 2 weeks to assess carbonation and if good, then put the rest in a cool place after 3 weeks has passed since bottling. Will do that, for sure. Will try hard to save 6 or so for longer storage. Crappier it tastes up front, easier that will be, know what I mean?


----------



## BernardSmith

Certainly don't claim to have any expertise in brewing but I see that you did not in fact boil the DME. I have made apple ale that way but I wonder if not boiling DME results in two possible problems: first, does it permit DMS that forms to remain in the wort. It is not clear to me whether DMS is a product only of mashed grains or will be found in DME or LME. Normally boiling the wort boils off the DMS. The second issue is about possible haze. It is not entirely clear to me whether DME needs a hot break to help remove proteins or whether the way that DME is produced means that proteins have already largely been removed. I believe that Mr Beer type recipes don't ask to boil the extract and I know that boiling extract causes darker beer than you might intend but I wonder whether whether boiling for say, 10 or 15 minutes may not be enough to remove protein and DMS...


----------



## jswordy

BernardSmith said:


> Certainly don't claim to have any expertise in brewing but I see that you did not in fact boil the DME. I have made apple ale that way but I wonder if not boiling DME results in two possible problems: first, does it permit DMS that forms to remain in the wort. It is not clear to me whether DMS is a product only of mashed grains or will be found in DME or LME. Normally boiling the wort boils off the DMS. The second issue is about possible haze. It is not entirely clear to me whether DME needs a hot break to help remove proteins or whether the way that DME is produced means that proteins have already largely been removed. I believe that Mr Beer type recipes don't ask to boil the extract and I know that boiling extract causes darker beer than you might intend but I wonder whether whether boiling for say, 10 or 15 minutes may not be enough to remove protein and DMS...



I dunno, Bernard, I just went with the Cooper's instructions but modified the recipe a bit. That way, I could use the small stock pots we have without having to do a true wort boil in a big pot I would have had to pay quite a bit for, just to try this out.

It's all extract on purpose, so I did not have to worry about being as anal as most of my beer-maker friends are (that's the best thing about making wine, too!). I did study for ~ 6 months online before trying the first one. I have seen a video by a guy who makes his with simple hot tap water (which the Cooper's instructions say is also allowable).

The way Cooper's gets the proteins, etc., out is to encourage you to put ice and cold water in the wort and hustle it down to 70-80 F. for a cold break. It took me about 5 minutes to cool it. If I did that right, it should have produced sediment that I'll find at the bottom of the bucket.

It smells absolutely great from the airlock, I have a great ferment, and we'll see in a couple more days.

Cooper's says to transfer and bottle right away, using their pills. I want to put it in secondary and then use a primer. A homebrew friend of mine told me last night that he'd recommend the honey as a primer. That's still up in the air right now. Honey is very difficult to incorporate evenly into the beer, even diluted in water. It could fail to ferment if too much falls out again as crystals during mixing.

I have that and also corn sugar on hand. I also have some SuperKleer, if need be.


----------



## Boatboy24

If you're priming with honey, you might want to check carbonation after a week. My first batch was WAY over carbonated after two weeks. I followed the instructions regarding how much exactly. Now, I test after a week. If they're good, into the fridge they go!

I subsequently read that using honey/agave, etc can add some variables since the sugar content may vary. And of course, storage temp during that carbonation phase may speed things up or slow them down.


----------



## jswordy

Boatboy24 said:


> If you're priming with honey, you might want to check carbonation after a week. My first batch was WAY over carbonated after two weeks. I followed the instructions regarding how much exactly. Now, I test after a week. If they're good, into the fridge they go!
> 
> I subsequently read that using honey/agave, etc can add some variables since the sugar content may vary. And of course, storage temp during that carbonation phase may speed things up or slow them down.



Thank you, Jim. I am leaning more and more toward using corn sugar my first time out just to be safe. A learning curve. 4 oz. ought to prime to 2.2 or 2.3 carb and that would be just a bit fizzier than a draft bitter. I'll check at one week, and again at two weeks. Cooper's says three weeks is full carbonation, but if it's good I'll chill it down.

Planning to bottle carb at around 65 ambient air temp, then cool down once it hits "good." That work?

I have an old 1960s chest Coke cooler that I used to use to keep bottle beer in. It has the bottle racks in it, if you recall those type. I need to get the junk off the top of it and plug it in to see if still works. It would be perfect for shutting down the prime and keeping things cool. Hey, for $25 at an auction, what can I say?

Next up, I may try a Scottish ale knockoff recipe. If I could approximate Belhaven, I would be a happy man. If I could approximate Innis & Gunn (a much tougher target), I would be in heaven. Lots of online recipes for it, but none that have hit dead-on. If you have not tried I&G Canadian Cherrywood Aged, please do yourself a favor!


----------



## BernardSmith

I wonder whether the tabs in the kit are for priming - so rather than adding the priming sugar to the bottling bucket you add a tab or two (?) to each bottle. 
Good luck with your beer. 
Last year I was experimenting with meads and ciders. This year I am planning on doing some experimentation with beer and some berry wines. I like the idea of using wine yeasts to ferment the sugars from grains and I have obtained an enzyme that will help break down the longer molecules of sugar that wine yeast has trouble with to enable those yeasts to ferment dry those sugars. I guess I am looking to see what I can do with saison type ales (a kinda folk peasant beer) using the kinds of flavors that wine yeasts can help impart


----------



## jswordy

BernardSmith said:


> I wonder whether the tabs in the kit are for priming - so rather than adding the priming sugar to the bottling bucket you add a tab or two (?) to each bottle.
> Good luck with your beer.
> Last year I was experimenting with meads and ciders. This year I am planning on doing some experimentation with beer and some berry wines. I like the idea of using wine yeasts to ferment the sugars from grains and I have obtained an enzyme that will help break down the longer molecules of sugar that wine yeast has trouble with to enable those yeasts to ferment dry those sugars. I guess I am looking to see what I can do with saison type ales (a kinda folk peasant beer) using the kinds of flavors that wine yeasts can help impart



Yes, Bernard, Cooper's makes a priming tab - they are not included in the kit. Of course, they highly recommend you use those, 2 to a bottle!

I'm just doing this to see if I can do it, really. I have wondered about cross-use of yeasts, too - beer to make wine, etc. I like saisons.

But like I said, Innis & Gunn is the primo ale IMHO. I have tasted none better, anywhere. Very complex. Addictive. If I could even get reasonably close to that and save myself spending $3.50 per 11 ounce bottle, I would be very happy.

I'm playing around to see if my winemaker's nose and palette might actually work with beer recipes, too. Just something new to do. Craft beer is THE thing right now in the Huntsville, Ala., area - bar none. I used to see lots of CL ads for used home brewing equipment. Hardly ever see it listed anymore. Demand is high!

If I have a couple small successes, then I will invest in a kettle.

Thanks for the help - I'll let you know how it turns out.


----------



## BernardSmith

Not that you are asking but I make single gallon batches and use a 3 gallon stockpot as my brew kettle. I don't have the beer making toys like the big boys but I find I can use the same kind of bags I use for making fruit wines to mash my grains - set my oven on the lowest setting, get to 170 and turn it off, add the grains in the bag, sparge in the bag over a colander and boil the mash on top of the cooker. A gallon of wort may take about 2.5 - 3 lbs of grain. For mashing you might want about 2 qts of water for every lb of grain and for boiling you want perhaps about 2 gallons of liquid (an hour's boil will evaporate off about a gallon). But apologies if, as they say, I am teaching my grandmother how to suck eggs (why "they" say that I have no idea, but "they" do). With micro batches I am happy to experiment and I can brew indoors and in my kitchen and still do some work in the evening


----------



## botigol

No need for the secondary; you can just leave the beer in primary for 2-4 weeks. Check that it is done using your hydrometer, just like wine. More than likely, it will finish in less than one week, but the yeast need time to absorb some fermentation byproducts. As a general statement, beer makers are paranoid about infection. PARANOID I say; and will say to skip secondary for this reason. I just find it easier to leave it in one vessel for the duration. Since your plan is to secondary for only a week, there isn't much, if any, benefit, so I would stick with the primary.

Three weeks at 70F is the generally accepted set of conditions for carbonation. A cooler temperature will prolong the process, but by how much is a complete guess. I have had some that seemed fully carbed in a shorter time, but noticed that there was an underlying sweetness in some of the early drinkers that went away, so it seems like priming sugar that had not finished fermenting. My experience is that using honey as the priming agent takes longer than corn sugar or apple juice.

I use the calculator in the following link for priming solution. For the Current Temperature entry, use the highest post-fermentation temperature that the beer experienced:

http://www.northernbrewer.com/priming-sugar-calculator/

I will suggest giving it a full three weeks to carbonate, leave a bottle in the frig for at least 24 hours (three days would be better) and then open to check it. If it tastes good and is carbed, you are good to go!


----------



## Elmer

Funny I was just looking at beer kits last night. I was pricing cream ale or IPAs.
I intend to make a batch next week and give it a shot, but the idea of priming flusters me.
I have seen the tab and they seem to be elmer-proof (IE: idiot proof).

best of luck with the brew!


----------



## BernardSmith

Hi Elmer. Priming is really very simple. Basically, you dissolve about 20 -25 g (or about an ounce) of sugar per gallon (or whatever the instructions suggest) to be primed in a small quantity of water. I boil this in my microwave for about 1 minute and add this to the bottling bucket. You then rack the beer into the bucket and gently mix the sweetener and the beer. You then bottle. At about 10 beer bottles / gallon you have primed each bottle with about 2 g of sugar. Since the yeast is still active it will ferment that sugar but since you have capped the bottles the CO2 that is produced has no where to go except in the liquid (and the inch or so of head room in each bottle)... After a couple of weeks that CO2 is nicely dissolved in the beer and when you pour it because of the proteins in the beer (I think that is the reason) it forms a head. You add too much sugar and the beer is all head. You add to little and you have no head.


----------



## jswordy

We are in the secondary!





A homebrewing friend called me last night, which was very timely since my air lock had stopped bubbling. He said his beers typically finish at 3 days. He also said not to worry too much about headspace with beer but to put the carboy in the warmest room in the house for ale. Racked it over today. Tastes fine to me. All is well at this point.

Thanks for your process, Bernard. That was good reading. Now I'm out to rack over my blueberry wine in the cold shed, once it stops raining.


----------



## BernardSmith

Hi Jim, Looks really good. I agree. I tend to find that if I pitch the yeast late Wednesday night by Sunday afternoon fermentation has slowed to a crawl. 

You may want to keep the carboy covered (or in the dark). Ultraviolet light can result in the chemicals produced by the hops turning quite literally "skunky". I believe that the perfume sprayed by skunks has the same chemical composition as the reduction of the hop flavors by light.


----------



## Elmer

I dont know how accurate this is, but I have been getting advice from brewers, that you can stay in a primary bucket for 2 weeks and then bottle.
I was told to avoid racking and exposure to oxygen, I know most directions indicate to do a 2 stage ferment, So I am quite torn on this.
However if I can get it all done in primary all the better.
Or 
why can I rack to a carboy for secondary and just add priming sugar from there and just bottle with the AIO?

Any reason not to?


----------



## BernardSmith

Elmer, I think today, most brewers only rack to a secondary if the beer needs aging (high ABV imperial stouts and the like) or if they are adding fruit and that sort of thing. As botigol suggests (post #18) brewers are near clinically psychotic about spoilage and have tremors at the idea of racking from one vessel into another unless that other is a keg into which they can pump CO2 ... You can certainly add your priming sugar into the primary and bottle from there but don't you have a layer of "trub" in that carboy? How will you adequately mix the sugar, keep the trub out of the bottles and do these two things before the sugar has had time to ferment out in the carboy? If you have no sediment in the primary then there is no good reason that I can see that would prevent you from using your fermenter as the bottling bucket. My own practice is to transfer from the primary (or the secondary) into a bucket or another carboy and bottle from there. Brewers swear by Star-san as their sanitizer. I use K-meta and am more laid back. But then I brew a gallon at a time and not a brewery's worth of beer so my experience may be quite different.


----------



## Elmer

Bernard,
my thought is this- finish in primary, rack to a carboy for bottling. Then add priming sugar, stir and use the AIO to bottle from the carboy!


----------



## BernardSmith

I think that your proposed method should work fine. Good luck with this brew. 
PS I see that you have included what looks like a chanukiah as part of your new avatar. I think though, if that is what it is , it has too few elements. It should have eight candle holders plus one additional one if it is to be lit during the eight nights of Chanukah. I think yours has 7 ... So perhaps it is designed for Kwanzaa.


----------



## jswordy

My advice from brewers is to use a secondary for up to 3 weeks. They are adament, too: A secondary means clearer beer. And secondaries mean it will clear faster. I've found this true with wine, too. If you rack rapidly, it clears faster.

I have caught up with a friend who started out home brewing and now is a brewmaster/part owner of a craft beer business producing hundreds of gallons a week (http://www.yellowhammerbrewery.com/), and I'm following that advice while acknowledging that there are lots of ways to do it, just as with wine.

As long as your yeast is not completely dormant and there is residual CO2 in the beer, one of my homebrewing friends says, you do not have to worry about oxidation in carboy. He says if the 3-piece airlock on your primary has the cap inside raised, you are good. If you transfer to carboy and the cap again raises, you are good to go. It does not have to actually bubble to have a protective carbon dioxide layer in there.

Of course, minimize splashing on transfer.

Just like with wine, my carboys are never left uncovered. It doesn't make for a very good picture that way, though.

As an aside, I don't understand why so many transfer beer to an open bottling bucket before bottling, if there is such concern over oxidation. I won't be doing that. It will all be carboys from here to the bottle.

As with wine, I use Easy Clean as a sanitizer. I will run the bottles in a hot dishwasher cycle using only water before bottling.

Pretty confident now that this first effort will succeed. Designing a recipe that's more complex for my second effort, whenever that may happen. (I like winemaking better so far.) Thanks for the help!


----------



## jswordy

*Regress report: *Not swaggering with confidence anymore. This may be a case of too many cooks spoiling the stew. Looked last night and saw what looked like a few clumps of bubbles on top. Looked this morning, they look more like white mold clusters. Tasted the beer; it still tastes and smells fine to me. It's pretty clear.

I sanitized everything to the max. I should have strictly followed the Coopers instructions and bottled immediately after primary, up to 6 days out from pitching max. I am at Day 8 now.

On top of my beer apparently being infected, I'm infected. So with a cold/flu, I am prepping my bottles in the dishwasher right now to try to save this batch.

My plan is to siphon the middle three-quarters of the beer into a new carboy, discard the rest, and bottle. If yeast are viable, the priming sugar should kick them off and hopefully they will kill off any invaders if I got ahead of it fast enough.

Looks to me like wine making is a lot easier and mellower experience. But then, I knew that going in. Well, we'll know in a couple weeks if it's toilet water or not. Wish me luck!


----------



## BernardSmith

Good luck, Jim and feel better. Not clear to me why the gods take delight in spoiling wines made from boiled grains yet seem to leave the wines made from unheated fruit pretty much alone. I wonder if Prometheus has second thoughts about his fire being used for Dionysis and the Bacchae. 

As for the open bottling bucket I think part of the reason is because that is what brewers do and part of the reason is that they find it easier to bottle using a spigot than a siphon and few glass carboys come ported. Even so, a ported (plastic) carboy would presumably tend to collapse into itself as a vacuum would slowly build if the top was capped and the vessel was being emptied of fluid... Perhaps brewers possess some shared ancient cultural memory of mishaps when they bottle from carboys....and how like magic the beer might stop flowing into the bottle before the carboy was even half empty...


----------



## jswordy

Waiting on my dishwasher, so I thought I'd try to take a pic. Harder than heck to actually do with any resolution through glass, so I circled them. Anyway...





New to the beer. So I may be over-reacting. But better safe than sorry. No whitish film on surface, so that's good. Smells and tastes fine as far as I can tell.

I sure do like the fact that wine over 10% ABV is practically indestructible!


----------



## jswordy

Well, it turns out I was over-reacting, a case of the newbs. Just caring too much! Once I started bottling,the "mold" on the surface disappeared. But it reappeared in the standing dregs of the secondary later. So it WAS bubbles, very very tiny and very concentrated. Ah, we learn something!

Anyway, the beer was clear and ready so I proceeded. It tastes really great flat. I am hoping that dry and bubbly it will be even better!

Thanks again to everyone who commented here. The help, as you can see, was badly needed. Now in 2 weeks we will see if I have what it takes to try a different batch.





I got a 55 bottle yield. ABV is between 5.5-6% (I didn't worry over exactness).





That bottle capper is from like 1965. It was given to me by an old guy I bought some carboys from. Works fine.


----------



## BernardSmith

ha! I have the same capper! Mine also works fine although I think the threads are reversed the way the handle needs to be lifted to raise the rod. I often find that I am lowering the handle just when I want to raise it another inch or so... and I have placed a small block of wood on that metal foot on which I stand my bottles on so that I am not so near the end of the threads when the capper closes around the cap ...


----------



## Elmer

This thread had been very informational.
I just bought my first brew Hophead Pale ale. Plan on joining the "wine makers who make beer" club this weekend


----------



## BernardSmith

Good luck, Elmer. Brewing is far more labor intensive than wine making - it is not surprising that brewers refer to the time they spend brewing as their "brew day"... Cannot speak for anyone else but I think you need to stand pretty close to your kettle for the hours (literally) it takes to mash, then boil and then cool the wort. You need to watch/control the temperature and then you need to watch to make sure that what is called the hot break does not in fact cause a boil over, and then if you are adding flavoring hops you need to watch the time to add the hops at different points in the boil. After the wort has been prepared you need to watch to make sure the pitching temperature has been hit. Those who brew using extract can reduce that time very considerably... but the upside is that low gravity beers are ready for drinking in about a month and a bottle of your own craft beer can taste wonderful after a day of hard mental or physical exertion


----------



## jswordy

BernardSmith said:


> ha! I have the same capper! Mine also works fine although I think the threads are reversed the way the handle needs to be lifted to raise the rod. I often find that I am lowering the handle just when I want to raise it another inch or so... and I have placed a small block of wood on that metal foot on which I stand my bottles on so that I am not so near the end of the threads when the capper closes around the cap ...



Haha, I did the same thing with the wood. The capper will not go far enough down for Heineken bottles, which is what I found that day at the recycler. 

Does your capper make an indentation in the center of the cap? I found to get them snug tight to where they will not twist, I need to press down enough that it dents the middle. 

Hey, it was free!


----------



## BernardSmith

Mine was also free... Cannot recall now who gave me it and yes, it makes a small indentation on the cap.. I wonder if they all did! But I much prefer this to the two handed models that are available today...


----------



## jswordy

Elmer said:


> This thread had been very informational.
> I just bought my first brew Hophead Pale ale. Plan on joining the "wine makers who make beer" club this weekend
> View attachment 19843



Good luck Elmer! Start your own thread on brew day so we see how it works out!


----------



## petey_c

Lots of good info in this thread. Okay, I'm part of the brewers-who-also-make-wine club. I've been brewing for a little over four years. I recently made about 7.5 gals of wine (1.5 gals of Pinot Noir (see my thread on disaster...) and 6 of Cab.). When I finished my first step, I thought I'd done something wrong, missed a step somehow. I was re-assured by my wine making friends that all was good. I made a batch of New Zealand Rye IPA the other day and it took me about four hours from start to finish. Much more involved than kit wine making (so far...). Most of the labor with brewing is up front before the primary.
Mostly no need to secondary unless you're adding fruit. Three weeks in the primary and three weeks in the bottle is a good general rule. The instructions that come with most kit beers are crap. Heavier beers (stouts, porters, meads and higher ABV levels) benefit from longer bottle conditioning times (3+ months). Wheat beers are drinkable very quickly (10 days or so). I only use glass bottles for brews that need aging. I use PET bottles for everything else. I've found that cappers are a PITA. Everybody gets a starsan bath before bottling, twist a cap on then off to the next. Another advantage to PET bottles is you get a good idea of carbonation. As carbonation increases the bottles get harder and harder. The Cooper carb tabs are a good idea, although I've never had luck with them. I believe it's one tab to a "stubbie" (350ml or about 12oz). As has been said here, about 1 ounce of corn sugar per gallon of brew for priming. If you have some stuff that's floating on top of your beer many times you can rack from underneath it and still have great beer. You can use clarifiers (fining) such as Irish Moss, Whirlfloc, etc. to help some of that stuff drop out of solution. I'm guessing that you wouldn't need it with strictly extract brews. It's more for all grain or mini-mashes. I hope you'll excuse my rambling on....


----------



## petey_c

Elmer said:


> This thread had been very informational.
> I just bought my first brew Hophead Pale ale. Plan on joining the "wine makers who make beer" club this weekend
> View attachment 19843


Elmer, Have those grains been crushed or is it my old eyes?


----------



## Elmer

petey_c said:


> Elmer, Have those grains been crushed or is it my old eyes?




Yes they have, just a bad photo.

Jswordy, that is an excellent idea I will I've it a try


----------



## jswordy

Hey-hey! Not too damned bad for the first time out! It will get you drunk, I'll say that for it. Drinking it now. Smooth with a slight bitter finish and the nice Cascade aromatics. The glass shown is a fairly hard pour 16 days into carb. I am going to go the full 3 weeks before putting it to bed in my Coke cooler. 

I can see where I want to go from here. Thanks to everyone for the newb support and help! Much appreciated.


----------



## BernardSmith

Looks really good! Nice job!


----------



## petey_c

I second BernardSmith's comment!


----------



## jswordy

A Scottish Ale kit arrived at the house yesterday.

Gee, I wonder who ordered that! 

Gonna refrigerate the grain and hops until I can get to it.


----------



## jswordy

So much for the English Bitter. Drank the last 2 bottles last night. It got better as it went along. I'll make that again sometime.


----------



## Elmer

jswordy said:


> So much for the English Bitter. Drank the last 2 bottles last night. It got better as it went along. I'll make that again sometime.




I have 36 bottles left, I have to ration what I have to make sure it lasts.

However I have moved up my next boil schedule from April 1 to March 1, so I can go 6 weeks (3 primary - 3 bottle) and have some brew ready for sping!


----------



## reefman

Kegged my first batch on Saturday. It's a "Dead Ringer IPA"
Will give it a try next weekend. Oh..... did I forget to say I hate bottling! So I bought a kegging system.


----------



## jswordy

reefman said:


> Kegged my first batch on Saturday. It's a "Dead Ringer IPA"
> Will give it a try next weekend. Oh..... did I forget to say I hate bottling! So I bought a kegging system.



I'm the exact opposite. I love bottling! It's the culmination of all that other tedious work. Especially since I learned to just toss the bottle into the dishwasher on hot wash/hot dry with no soap, then bottle. That takes the worst part of it out of the equation. The one advantage a keg system would have is, no sediment.


----------



## reefman

You must have a sanitize cycle on your dishwasher. If I had a good supply of bottles, and it was that easy, I probably would bottle.
Ps... I hate bottling my wine as well.


----------



## jswordy

reefman said:


> You must have a sanitize cycle on your dishwasher. If I had a good supply of bottles, and it was that easy, I probably would bottle.
> Ps... I hate bottling my wine as well.



Nope, not necessary. Set the dishwasher to hot wash and hot dry, use no soap, load clean bottles, and run a full cycle. You are good to go. I get bottles at the recycler all the time.


----------



## reefman

I'll have to check out a local recycle place. Thanks for that tip.


----------

