So i made my first beer using specialty grains (Only ever made beer with extract). After fermentation i bottle conditioned my beer, the problem is there is a nice layer of trub at the bottom of the bottles (more than I’ve ever had before) I’m thinking that i should have done a secondary fermentation before bottling. any suggestions on how to better filter the beer off of the trub to keep my final product cleaner?
No need for secondary. Just leave it in primary until everything has settled out and the beer is clear. May be up to 3 weeks depending on the yeast. Be careful when racking to the bottling bucket and leave the trub behind. You may sacrifice a little beer in the process, but your final product will be much cleaner.
The total fermentation time was 3 weeks 3 days, FG fell on what the recipe stated it would be i think i just had a sloppy racking to bottling bucket.
If you have to move you FV prior to transferring to you bottling bucket you should give it a little time to settle and let anything that was roused up drop back out. Better yet if you have a way to cold crash to help drop the beer clear before bottling. Bottle conditioning may take a little longer after cold crashing, but it still works the same way.
i don’t yet but i’m upgrading my ferm chamber so i can cold crash, as it is now the lowest i can get the temp is 63 degrees and that’s with the help of frozen gallon water jugs.
I kept my eyes out in local advertisements and found a fridge for free, I ordered a temp controller on Amazon and hooked it up. I use a terrarium coil heater inside the fridge. It allows me to keep my ferment at the perfect temp, and I can easily cold crash when it’s done. Maybe something like this would be cheap and easy for you.
i recently bought a wine chiller for about 70$ that will allow me to get to 40 degrees and my 5 gallon carboy fits perfectly inside so i can try to see if that will get the job done.
Let’s see if I understand your process correctly.
Some yeasts are more flocculant than others, hence some will have more yeast left in suspension at bottling, given bottling with room temp beer as a rule of thumb.
I just would caution you about cold crashing if you will be bottling with added sugar to naturally carbonate the beer. IMHO you don’t want to drop out too much of the suspended yeast. That is, my first concern would be to have sufficient yeast left in suspension at bottling to do a quick and thorough job of naturally carbonating the bottled beer.
Heck yeah, you’re going to have some extra yeast left in the bottle anyway created during bottle conditioning and so will be decanting the beer anyway.
I don’t know if you’ve tried it, but I’ve found that there’s plenty of yeast even after a couple months of cold crashing.
I was guessing you’d speak to this Denny. I guess I’m a bit of a hard sell on this since I’ve experienced some long carb times and some short carb times, and one failed carb when bottle conditioning and I just apply my own intuition on this. I don’t know if you’d accept “YMMV” as my recommendation. 8)
You have your experience and that’d hard to argue with. I and many others have had a different experience. That’s not to discount yours.