Does anyone here bottle from the primary fermentation vessel? I only brew small batches (max 10 liters), and not having to transfer the beer to another vessel is one less pita. How do you add the sugar and prevent the yeast from being mixed with the beer again after cold-crashing?
I’ve done it plenty of times with small batches. It is a hassle, but manageable. I used an autosiphon with the clip to keep the trub out. I sacrificed some beer for the good of the rest. I used carb tabs instead of mixing sugar into the lot.
I am pretty sure that the least PITA way to mix priming sugar without stiring up the yeast it to put the sugar in a bottling bucket and rack the beer off of the yeast into the bottling bucket.
You can individually dose bottles with priming syrup and an graduated eye dropper. Kind of a pain to get the numbers right, but I have done it successfully.
I got started home brewing with a spare Mr. Beer fermenter that a friend loaned me. I made several batches of kit beer and added priming sugar to water that had been boiled then cooled somewhat. I added it directly to the Mr. Beer fermenter, stirred it with a whisk, waited 30-mins and bottled.
It came out fine, but whatever strain of yeast that was included in the kit seemed to “glue” the sediment to the bottom of the fermenter. The Mr.Beer fermenter has a simple valve at the bottom to dispense the beer directly into the bottles.
I later tried another recipe with a different yeast strain and ran into a problem. Perhaps I didn’t use enough water to get the sugar fully dissolved before I added it to the fermenter or perhaps I didn’t stir it enough to mix it thoroughly.
Most of the bottles out of the fermenter were under carbonated. However, the bottles with a lot of sediment in them–I not going to throw good beer away just because its got trub in it-- turned into gushers when I opened them.
On batches made after that, instead of mixing priming sugar for the entire batch, I’ve been adding one domino “dot” i.e. sugar cube per 12-oz bottle with good results. I’ve been brewing porters and stouts and imho it works well for those styles.
Bottling straight from the primary has several advantages beyond skipping a step.
I’m trying to develop a “squirt prime” method using priming syrup in a spray bottle with a tube inserted in the nozzle. Going to bottle later this week. I’ll start a thread to report the results. It may take me a couple of batches to refine the method.
I tried the carb drops once myself. All went well until at some point I got the strong impression that I had forgotten to put a drop in one of the bottles. So I didn’t know how to solve this, freaked out and they had to carry me away in a straitjacket.
Bar supply shops sell stopper tops for liquor that dispense a measured amount of liquor and then stop until the bottle is righted. If there is a 1/2 oz version that would work with the right concentration sugar water.
That should work but would be too slow if you’re doing 50 bottles. With a pump-squirt system you can go down a line of bottles squirt-squirt-squirt and never tip up to reload.
That’s true - I see where you’re going now. Should work since the amount of liquid dispensed with each pump is probably uniform. Have you figured out the volume of a single ‘squirt’?
Bottled today. The 1.5 ml/squirt takes 4 squirts/bottle (with my current simple syrup formula) to equal the old standard of 3/4 cup of corn sugar per 5 gal. for prime. It took 62 seconds to prime 24 12 oz. bottles! You can’t put prime drops in that fast. I bottled a 5 gal. batch (52 bottles) in 1 hour and 40 minutes. From the primary fermenter. Bottles in cases to sanitize bottles and etc. to fill bottle to cap to rinse outside of bottle to dry with towel to back in cases and put up. By myself. 1:40
Shouldn’t be a problem IF you are very careful about the sugar concentration of the syrup. The concentration can be varied to change the amount of sugar added to each bottle.
Yes, you boil your specified amount of sugar in less than your end amount of water, cool it and top up with pre-boiled and cooled water to achieve your target volume of simple syurp. That way you accurately get a known amount of sugar per squirt. With careful sanitation, you can store simple syrup in the fridge for a month or two. Warm it to about room temp when you are ready to prime so it will go through the squirt pump properly.