So after much humming and hawing I now have 22 litres of Coopers IPA brewing away in a starter kit. At the end of the initial fermentation, what should I pour it into for the secondary fermentation? I was going to bottle it,must the bottles be glass,9bout lids and a capper) to stop explosions,or will plastic coke type bottles do as well? If this one goes ok,I will invest in a pressure barrel,but not yet. And how much will the beer expand in the 21 days it is finishing in?
Thanks,Stuart

For secondary fermentation, you prime with sugar. Some people transfer the beer to a 2nd bucket, “a bottling bucket” to do this. If you don’t have a 2nd bucket just prime each bottle with about a teaspoon of sugar, check the exact quantity for your recipe.

Plastic “PET” type bottles are fine. The ones that are made for fizzy drinks not for still mineral water etc.

Just leave the air space in the neck of the bottle. The good thing about the plastic bottles, is you can feel them and if they gone hard, then you know they have gone into 2nd fermentation.

I don’t bother bottling anymore and dumped the pressure barrels, I use “corny kegs” now. Well worth the extra investment.

Also, sign up to http://www.jimsbeerkit.co.uk/index.htm very helpful and friendly forum. No bickering and flounces on there……

I’m not going to profess to be an expert – but I’ve done a reasonable amount of home brewing. Personally I’d always go for glass bottles and fresh seal type caps – but I don’t see any reason why plastic bottles wouldn’t work. The only issue is knowing that your screw tops are properly sealed – i’m not sure if you can buy new ones with the little perforated rings?

The way to stop against explosions is make sure that you get the priming right – i.e. not too much extra sugar for the secondary fermentation. The only time I’ve had exploding bottles was when I tried to do each bottle individually with a teaspoon and a funnel. totally the dumbest idea I ever had…. Instead, syphon off your brew leaving the dead yeast behind, into another big and very clean container – then draw off an exact amount to mix your priming sugar into – i.e. a litre – do the maths to work out the amount of sugar for your total volume, mix it into the litre, then dump it back into the whole lot. Then syphon into your bottles and cap them.

That way, even if ll your bottles hve different volumes of liquid, your ratios should be good, and they’ll stop fermenting when the sugars used up, giving you a nice amount of pressure and avoiding it being too sweet by the yeast giving up before all the ‘food’ is gone.

You won’t get any liquid expansion, just pressure build up in the bottle – but you’ll still need to leave a good couple of cm from the lip of the bottle on each fill.

as a fellow newbie, i’d pick up some carbonation drops.

So much easier than faffing about with priming sugar, 2 drops in a bottle and off you go

Cornie kegs for the win, no messing about with secondary at all just pressurise to your desired fiz.

When I brew beer I re-use Heffe bottles with a new metal cap.

When I brew ginger beer I re-use 500ml plastic coke bottles and their own lids, they have all kept pressure for 18 months with no bother.

Pouring into a secondary barrel (do it gently so you don’t break the protein chains) and then adding the correct amount of priming sugar with a gentle stir gives a much more even secondary fermentation within the batch and reduces sediment.

Adding spoons of sugar is a bit more variable.

Carbonation drops are very good too – but quite expensive (depends on if you are going for cheer or easy).

I use a 5ml syringe, calculate out what strength sugar syrup I need and then add it to each bottle with the syringe. Then use a little bottler to fill the bottles, but I’m lazy.

Remember to sanitise your bottles before bottling.

I hate bottling day, got it down to just under 2 hours now.

At what stage of the fermentation do you put in a Corny Keg? Will there be sediment left in the keg?

Thanks folks, tabs now bought,and plastic bottles.

Double Post – Oops

PET bottles are fine, just make sure the tops are sterile as well as the bottles.
Easier to batch prime before bottling, there are lots of tables available on line for amount of sugar (or whatever) per litre, and a bottling stick which you attach to a tap from a brewbin makes bottling quicker and easier – siphoning is very messy.

You can move on to dark coloured 500ml bottles later if you like, get them from a friendly pub – Budvar bottles have tops which seal well with crown caps which you can buy, along with a crown capper from a brew supplier.

Enjoy!

At what stage of the fermentation do you put in a Corny Keg? Will there be sediment left in the keg?

I tend to transfer to the keg after the primary fermentation is finished, normally after 7 – 10 days. However, most people seem to recommend 14 days.

I do not prime for secondary fermentation in the keg, just purge with CO2 to prevent oxidation and seal the keg. The CO2 will begin to be absorbed into the beer. Again some people “force carb” by initially injecting with a higher pressure of about 30 psi/2 bar.

The other advantage of corny kegs, is that you get very drinkable beer within a week of kegging or so. That’s not to say that the beer would benefit from being left longer but it depends on how patient you are….

As corny kegs dispense out of the top via a dip tube that goes to the bottom of the keg, any sediment will be removed in the first couple of pints. Again, opinions vary but I have shortened my dip tubes so a leave about 1 pint of beer behind, this allows the keg to dispense clear beer and still keep plenty of active yeast in the beer.

I hate bottling day, got it down to just under 2 hours now.

That’s why I went for cornys. The initial set up seems expensive, about £150 for 2 kegs, regulator, gas deposit and fittings or about £200 for 4 kegs but it saves so much hassle it’s well worth it.

I subscribe to a KISS attitude to kit brewing (I’m going all out on my new all grain brewery though).

Bottles
Dark brown glass bottles are by far the best, but as long as you keep it in the dark coke bottles are fine. DO NOT LET YOUR BEER SEE SUNLIGHT.

Sanitise everything, star-san (other no rise sanitisers are available) spray if you have it, normal sanitizer if you don’t and then rinse under the tap.

bottling

I just use a syphon, a proper bottling wand would make life easier, but I’m happy to just put an old towel down, arrange 40 bottles on the floor, barrel on a worktop and accept I’ll spill a fair bit squeezing the tube to stop the flow between bottles. Whatever type of bottles you use, you need some headspace at the top, about 1″ should do it (half of the neck in a glass bottle, just down to the shoulder in a coke bottle).

I’ve got bottling 40pints down to about 30-40min. Half that if someone else is capping for me.

Priming
You can go to the effort of a bottling bucket, and mixing the priming sugar in there, but that’s another thing to do, and another place for air/bacteria to reach the beer. I just dissolve the sugar in a pint of boiling water, cove with clingfilm and leave to cool overninght. Stir in VERY gently so as not to disturb the yeast (with a sanitised spoon). As long as the beer and the sugar/water are at the same temperature they should mix with very little effort. Do it just before you sanitise the bottles to let it mix/diffuse.

Dry hopping
If it’s not finished fermenting yet*, go back to your homebrew shop and get some hops dry hop it with on day 5, about 50g-100g depending on your taste (100g will be overpowering) of Amarillo, Simcoe or Citra (find a comerical IPA you like and see what they use) would go well, and as an added bonus hide a multitude of sins. Hops are anti bacterial, more hops = better taste and less chance of off beer.

*10 days at 18C is about right, don’t put it anywhere warm, above 20C and it’ll be an estery mess, below 15C and it might stop fermenting (but will taste fine as long as it warms up again and finishes off).

If this one goes ok,I will invest in a pressure barrel,but not yet.

I wouldn’t bother, I never use mine. They’re not air tight enough to stop it spoiling, getting the carbonation level right is really difficult, and unless it’s a one-off for a party (in which case open up the valve on top and pour any remaining beer down the drain the next morning) then you’ll waste a lot of CO2 canisters keeping it topped up.

The first few brews/kits are a steep learning curve, you will likely get some nasty beers, some flat beers, metallic beers, estery beers, plastic beers, some overly carbonated beers. My only advice would be progress to more expensive kits quickly, £22 for 40pints might not be as good as £10 for 40 pints, but it’s still cheep and it’s definitely better. And if the instructions ay use “this or that” always go for the expensive option (liquid malt extract instead of dry, dry malt extract instead of brewing sugar, brewing sugar instead of table sugar).

Just to add to TINAS excellent post above, sanitiser is not cleaner, make sure everything is clean first with something like WBP and finally sanitise when clean

Indeed, cleanliness is next to godliness and all that.

I usual clean my bottles out once they’re empty, then rinse (there will be dust in there, and occasionally dead insects), then sanitise before bottling.

Have a read of the “brewers of STW” thread. Even if you never go past kits it’s useful to appreciate how the process works (and where off flavours come from).

The great thing about homebrew is it’s very difficult to supersede your equipment, you can’t buy a better Fermenting bin (well you can, a conical, but that’s borderline pro, and even smaller pro breweries use plastic). So you just work backwards

Kit – an FV and bottling stuff
Extract – a brewing kettle (or a big stock pot)
All grain – either BIAB in your brewing kettle or stock pot or a full on nano-brewery. But you’ll still use your old FV (or covert it to a kettle or mash tun).

And hombrew clubs/friends rock. Unlike any other hobby there is no snobbishness/gatekeeper, the guy tasting your beer will tell you (honestly) how bad it is and how to improve it, but not because they’re mean, it’s because he want’s to drink better beer next time. No one will ever say “noooob, you can’t go to all grain without doing extract first”, they want you to brew free beer for them so it may as well be good beer! Unlike MTB where there’s always someone in the group trying to convince the newbie they really do need 650b wheels and £200 lights to join in and that a £300 bike from Halfords will never be good enough.

Try the coopers stout next – add dried malt extract (spraymalt – from home brew shops) instead of sugar, reduce the water volume a wee bit to increase the strength and flavour, and you get a lovely brew………

Coopers kits are good value and never (for me anyway) suffer from stuck fermentation.

I use recycled bottles, usually from Fullers, Theakstons or Black Sheep (the labels come off as soon as they even see water). Wychwood bottles have too fat an opening for my capper.
I also use Coopers’ PET bottles, which some Tesco stores stock at < £10 for 24. Only one or two in each batch but when they’re rock hard, they’re ready…
Another reason for bottles, despite the pain, is if one bottle isn’t quite clean, you’ve only lost one bottle, not the whole batch…

Thanks for all the excellent advice guys,dry hops have also been ordered!

Some good information on this thread, cheers.
My beer always tastes metallic, any ideas on whats causing that?

Doug

Another question – when bottling should I be minimising the amount of yeast in the bottle? At the moment I’m syphoning from the bucket to a barrel, leaving as much yeast behind in the bucket then immediately bottling from the barrel again minimising the yeast again.

I’m finding that the secondary fermentation whilst it produces some pressure in the bottles isn’t making them “rock hard”.

Plastic PET bottles are useful especially for a beginner, you can feel the pressure (and also release a bit if the beer is over-fizzy). I just re-used commercial 500ml ones which I kept for the purpose. Never had a problem. Not done it for a while though, plenty of good cheap beer round here.

At the end of the initial fermentation, what should I pour it into for the secondary fermentation?

Once I’m sure fermentation has stopped (take hydrometer readings)I syphon from primary into a pressure barrel, which is batch primed with around 70g sugar dissolved in boiled water. I then syphon into sanitised glass bottles, using a bottling wand, cap, and leave to secondary ferment and condition.

The advantages of this method are a precise quantity of sugar in each bottle and reduced sediment. Sanitising an extra barrel is no great effort.

One thing to be aware of with the kits: they often take a lot longer than the instructions – my last brew (Woodforde’s Nelson’s Revenge) had nearly three weeks in primary before fermentation finished.

Ransos,am I right in thinking the reading should be stable for three days as an indicator that primary is finished. I am going to leave it for two weeks for primary as the room is cold during the day when I am not in.

Ransos,am I right in thinking the reading should be stable for three days as an indicator that primary is finished. I am going to leave it for two weeks for primary as the room is cold during the day when I am not in.

Yeah, but I usually give it a couple of stirs with a clean plastic spoon to make sure it’s finished – Woodfordes kits are notorious for getting “stuck”.

A brewing friend suggested putting the fermeter into a builder’s trug, fill with water and use a fishtank heater to keep it at a stable 20 degrees. Haven’t tried it yet.

http://www.jimsbeerkit.co.uk (.com?) is a very useful resource for all things brewing. It even has a forum!

I hate bottling day, got it down to just under 2 hours now.

That’s why I went for cornys. The initial set up seems expensive, about £150 for 2 kegs, regulator, gas deposit and fittings or about £200 for 4 kegs but it saves so much hassle it’s well worth it. Thinking of moving to kegs, (bottling day is a pain in the aris), but the risk of sliding into hopeless alcoholism is staying my hand. A keg of fine ale just sitting there, asking to be tanned – it’s a subtle difference but it seems more accessible than bottles in the cellar.

A keg of fine ale just sitting there, asking to be tanned – it’s a subtle difference but it seems more accessible than bottles in the cellar.

I agree – it’s why I bottle mine instead of using a pressure barrel. Or at least do 50:50.