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New to brewing, have a few questions.
Hello everyone,
I am new to beer making, and have just started my first batch. I started out using a dutch lager brew house beer kit. Currently my beer is fermenting and doing good, but I have a few quick questions:
1. Can I use regular warehouse bought tubing to siphon my beer, or do I need a food grade siphon?
2. How do I tell when my beer is ready to be bottled from the carboy? The guy at the store said we wouldn't need a hydrometer, but the instructions say you must check that it's at the proper specific gravity before bottling.
3. The instructions say after fermenting for 3-6 days, and then transferring to the carboy for two weeks (or more depending on specific gravity) it can be bottled, and then left to sit for 2+ weeks to allow for proper carbonation. Can we simply use 2 litre pop bottles for this, or will the beer skunk/become contaminated from the plastic?
Thanks in advance for any help!!
Connor
Welcome Aboard Connor!
Lots of great people here with lots of experience to learn from.
Can I use regular warehouse bought tubing to siphon my beer, or do I need a food grade siphon?
Don't really know. I would always use food grade stuff just in case.
How do I tell when my beer is ready to be bottled from the carboy? The guy at the store said we wouldn't need a hydrometer, but the instructions say you must check that it's at the proper specific gravity before bottling.
What homebrew store doesn't want to sell you a hydrometer?!?! It is one of the single most important tools in the brewers toolbox. without it all you know is that you have sugary stuff that's turning into alcoholy stuff. 
Without it the best way to tell is by time. once the airlock really slows down or stops bubbling (1 bubble every 5 min or so) move over to secondary to clear, and then a week or two after that bottle. A hydrometer is crucial to this process because if you bottle to soon then the beer will continue to ferment in the bottles and [b]Possibly[b] cause them to explode. Which is very dangerous even in plastic.
The instructions say after fermenting for 3-6 days, and then transferring to the carboy for two weeks (or more depending on specific gravity) it can be bottled, and then left to sit for 2+ weeks to allow for proper carbonation. Can we simply use 2 litre pop bottles for this, or will the beer skunk/become contaminated from the plastic?
Plastic is much more porous than glass and your beer will Oxidize much faster. Don't really know about using the 2 liter bottles. Plastic is much harder to clean well than glass is and I would be worried about some germs getting in or staying in and ruining a bottle of beer. What I have always done is only drink beer that comes in pry off caps. Save the bottles clean off the labels sanitize them in some star san and reuse them I was gonna drink the beer anyway.... And now i have an excuse to buy better beer not just another case of twist off Bud Light.
Good luck, I am happy to have you here. Someone will post something else soon if I havn't answered all your questions. If all else fails Be patient, read some books on brewing and learn from everything, even terrible tasting beer.
ID
I would get an auto siphon. http://www.midwestsupplies.com/5-16-auto-siphon.html It makes siphoning much easier. I'd also buy the tubing that is food grade. I don't know that regular tubing would be bad, but better safe than sorry.
Also, if you leave the beer in the fermenter for 3 weeks, it will most likely be done fermenting and be ok to transfer. Having a hydrometer is the only way to tell for sure though. If you take a hydrometer reading one day and come back a day or 2 later and take another reading and it hasn't changed, it's done. If it has changed, leave it in for another week and take another 2 day set of readings.
2 liter bottles are usually clear, which will let in light and the beer can get skunked. Also, once you open it, you would pretty much have to drink the whole thing then or the rest will go flat. Not a big problem if your going to be sharing the beer with friends, but if you are by yourself and want to drink it, you'd be in trouble. Some people do use the smaller size soda bottles, and you can sometimes get those in brown, A&W root beer I think makes brown bottles. The brown bottles should keep out the light. In any case, make sure the bottles are sanitized.
do not use tubing from a warehouse, use food grade tubing. I'm still trying to live down my vinyl brown ale that I made about 2 years ago.
bruguru wrote:
do not use tubing from a warehouse, use food grade tubing. I'm still trying to live down my vinyl brown ale that I made about 2 years ago.
Unless by warehouse he means homedepot. You can get food grade vinyl tubing at home depot.
1) food grade tubing can be bought at Mills fleet farm or other farm supply store in the plumbing section for about 16 cents a foot. It's cheap and the money you are spending on your beer supplies it's not worth the risk to try non food grade tubing.
2) uing a glass carboy you can tell when the beer is done. you'll notice obvious activity during fermentation, the krausen forming and everything kinda moving around in slow motion washing machine style, and the airlock is bubbling like crazy. when the frmemtation slows down you will see the krausen drop to bottom of carboy and you will see the beer getting clear from the top down over a period 1 to 3 days. when it's clear all the way to the bottom except for the sediment, then you are safe to transfer to secondary.
Leavit it in secondary for another week and you should be ok to bottle, BUT even though I have seen this happen I still use a hydrometer to be sure. I don'r ncessarily take 3 reading in a row but I do make sure it is within th final fravity specs of the beer I am making.
Hydrometers are cheap, about 10 to 20 bucks and take guesswork out of it.
As far as 2 litre plastic bottles, no I would not use them. eventually the beer will get off flavors from the oxygen working in through the plastic. you cna ue beer bottles from beer you've bought from liquor stores, just make sure they aren't screw off type.
DC
Thanks a lot for the replies, I appreciate all the feedback!
I will definitley get the food grade tubing then, thought since I had some non food grade stuff kicking around I mine as well check to see if it was safe, but I will not risk it.
As for bottling, how would I re-use beer bottles? Would I need to buy something to put the lids back on? Or there any other cost effect methods for storage/bottling?
You'll need to get a bottle capper. Its the cheapest way to go. There's a couple different versions available, a wing capper and a bench capper. I've got a bench capper and its the only one I've ever used.
You'll also need some bottle caps and priming sugar (corn sugar or table sugar).
As for bottles, the cheapest way to go is to reuse the bottles from the beer you buy. Or hit up a recycling center and buy the bottles back for 5 cents a piece. Make sure they're all pry off ones as opposed to the screw tops. Soak the bottles in fragrance free Oxyclean to clean them and remove the labels and then sanitize them with something like Star San or Iodophor before filling.
If you are going to need some bottles right away, check your local craigslist. When I was bottling, my favorite size was the 22oz., about a pint & a half. Fewer bottles to wash, fewer to cap. Rinse your bottles as you drink, run them through the dishwasher on a hot cycle, and you're good to bottle. Do you have a bottle filler?
bruguru wrote:
I'm still trying to live down my vinyl brown ale that I made about 2 years ago.
yep
Brewski wrote:
Do you have a bottle filler?
Sorry, what is that? I don't believe so..
I bought some tubing today from Home Depot. It's Polyethylene. The box said it was safe to use for water lines and ice makers, this should be safe right?
Here's a link:
http://www.homedepot.com/Building-Mater … ogId=10053
http://www.midwestsupplies.com/fermtech … iller.html
That is a bottle filler. The same kind that I use in fact. It's got a little plastic nib on the end that acts like a valve. When you push down on it, the flow of beer starts. Lift up & gravity shuts off the flow (usually), allowing you to move on to the next bottle w/ no spillage(ideally, I usually get some drips and the occasional stuck nib/valve). Also, if you fill the bottle to the very top while the filler is all the way to bottom of the bottle, the filler displaces just enough beer to leave the perfect amount of head space when you pull it back out of the bottle.
NewToBrew1 wrote:
Brewski wrote:
Do you have a bottle filler?
Sorry, what is that? I don't believe so..
I bought some tubing today from Home Depot. It's Polyethylene. The box said it was safe to use for water lines and ice makers, this should be safe right?
Here's a link:
http://www.homedepot.com/Building-Mater … ogId=10053
Yep. that's fine.
DC
Awesome guys. I will look into getting one of those bottle fillers. Beer should be ready to bottle in two weeks
Also, be sure to sanitize everything. Like the hydrometer before you drop it into your beer. And don't let the hydrometer touch the sides of your bucket. It should bobble in the middle of the beer. And I can't emphasize enough, be clean. If you ask yourself along the way, "do I need to sanitize that first?", then sanitize it. It takes a few seconds, and it may save all your hard work.
And, welcome!
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