Tag Archives: carb-drops

Mar 202118Thu

After eight days in the chiller it’s time to put this one away, and I decided to fill one of my 5 litre kegs with the rest going into bottles, hopefully letting me form a comparison not only between this brew and my first extract blonde, but also between keg and bottle versions of the same batch.

Eliminating Oxygen

Keg or bottle regardless, I was keen to prevent as much oxygen from getting at the beer as I possibly could. Bag-Thing was already rigged up to the mini bucket while it cold-crashed in the fridge (used between ¼ and ⅓ of a filled bag over the week, for the record) so it was just a matter of topping up the carbon dioxide bag as I drained the beer. This was easily achieved by fitting a John Guest splitter between the bag and the bucket and splicing it to the CO2 regulator so that it could be manually topped up as needed.

Using Bag-Thing as a CO2 buffer while bottling / kegging

Before I started drawing off beer into the keg I wanted to make sure that my dip tube wasn’t about to suck up dead hops and other trub, which took some leap of faith since I had no way of telling how much was in there and nor any means to filter the output. In the end I decided that cold-crashing should have settled everything as much as it was ever going to be settled, so I rotated the dip tube to its highest setting by turning the spigot clockwise – a neat feature to have.

But I still didn’t know if the tube would be clear of the sediment, so the only way to find out was to fill a cheeky tumbler. Immediately I started getting bits of hops but the stream soon cleared up, must have just picked up some random particles while adjusting the tube. The beer wasn’t anywhere near as clear as Bure Gold – the first one I ever cold-crashed – but then again that was too was cloudier during kegging than nearer the end. This did however taste wonderful, not as bitter as the first extract attempt and with slightly more hop punch. Time for one last check of the bag setup and let’s get it done.

Kegging from the SS Brewtech Mini Bucket

Once I was confident that no oxygen would enter via the top, putting this into a sanitised & purged keg was as simple as connecting a piece of silicone hose from the elevated bucket’s spigot to a barbed beer disconnect and popping the pressure relief valve now and then. That last step grew old very quickly so I fitted a gas disconnect as well and just kept topping up the CO2 at the bag end while the keg vented it to atmosphere. I realise now that with the bag being such an effective buffer I could easily have used the extraneous gas from the keg to top up the bag and made for a truly closed loop – definitely something to try next time.

I used the “cold finger” method again and left the keg with about 2 inches of head space before pressurising it to 30 PSI and putting it in the chiller. I’ll reduce this gradually after 3 or 4 days to 10 PSI serving pressure, hopefully that should then be ready to sample.

… and now Bottling

I really wanted to use my Blichmann Beer Gun to continue the oxygen-free theme but there was one small problem: I needed the JG 2-way splitter in order to provide the gun with gas, but that piece was in use by Bag-Thing. (sorted for next time: an adapter is on the way)

To overcome the equipment shortage I temporarily borrowed the CO2 supply and crudely purged some clear flip-top bottles by flushing them with carbon dioxide after I’d dropped in two carbonation drops in each, targeting 750 ml. Yes, overdoing it a bit there, but those drops were all I had left and I couldn’t be arsed to mess about weighing out loose dextrose for the sake of a couple of bottles. Once they were gassed and carbed it was easy to rest the flip-top stopper on the mouth of the bottle until each could be filled via the same silicone tube I used while kegging, just without the disconnect attached.

All this went fairly well until I started drawing bubbles halfway into the first bottle – guess that dip tube must be quite long after all. Seeing bubbles during filling is never good, but I kept telling myself that it should be OK since the bottles were filled with CO2, and it’s better to splash some gas about than set the tube too low and draw in unwanted rubbish. This method of constant adjustment saw me filling four 500 ml clear flip-tops while lowering the dip tube gradually before I hit the hops on the fifth bottle.

While cleaning the vessel after bottling I noted that the trub-line was roughly equal to the conical part. Obviously this will vary wildly depending on what’s added to the brew during fermentation, but it’s good to have this guide and reassuring to know that there’s quite a bit of adjustment on the dip tube – the guys at SS Brewtech have clearly done their homework.

In closing, one thing’s just occurred to me: by cold-crashing before bottling I may have removed the yeast that I need to turn my carbonation drops into carbonation. If these turn out to be flat then I need to learn from this, and draw off that part of the batch which is to be bottled before cold-crashing. As always, fingers crossed …

#wisdom: cold-crashing the mini bucket for a week uses between ¼ and ⅓ of a filled Bag-Thing, no need to worry about having to refill it partway.

#wisdom: if filling a purged keg from the brew bucket, use the gas that’s being driven out of the keg to refill the bag on top of the bucket.

Mar 202116Tue

Thanks to a mix-up at bottling time yesterday, the 31 mixed bottles only have 50% of the priming sugar that they should, and today I corrected that by cracking some of the bottles open again and adding the last of my carbonation drops. The 31 bottles of Mangrove Jack’s Strawberry & Peach Cider now look like this:

  • 10 metallic red crown caps: 85g of dextrose per 17 litre batch, so around 2.5g per bottle – roughly 50% of what’s appropriate. I left these alone from yesterday because I’m curious to see how ‘flat’ they are, and because I’ve never diddled with recently capped bottles and need an insurance policy.
  • 11 clear flip-tops: same 2.5g from batch priming, plus one Fox’s carbonation drop. Two of these are recommended for a 500 ml bottle and together they weight in a smidge over 5g, so these flip-tops should be perfectly carbed.
  • 10 non-metallic red crown caps: these also have 2.5g per bottle from yesterday, but to each I added one Cooper’s carbonation drop, aimed at 375ml and weighing in at 3.04g. This means the non-metallic red crown caps are technically over-carbed by 10% but I don’t expect it’ll make much difference – in truth I used the Cooper’s drops because I’d run out of Fox’s.

Looking back over the process of re-opening these I don’t think there’s very much to worry about. Each bottle was treated to a good dose of sanitiser before I popped the cap, and as soon as I did so I dropped in a carbonation drop and added a fresh, sanitised crown cap – or flipped shut the still wet flip-top. I did the flip-tops first and noticed that adding in the carbonation drop resulted in a fair bit of fizz, but because the flip-top was within reach I was able to cap it before anything boiled over. The first couple of crown caps I treated subsequently did eject some foam, but then I nailed the procedure and the rest were OK. No spinners or obviously leaky caps.

All 31 bottles were moved to the server room which is bouncing between 21 and 25 ℃ depending on the amount of sunshine that day. In around a week’s time I’ll put these out to the garage for conditioning.

#wisdom: ending with a positive, and I hear that cider isn’t too bothered about oxygen since it’s the hop oils in beer which cause oxidisation when exposed, so unless it’s a dry-hopped cider there’s nothing to worry about. Oh well, was fun playing with the beer gun all the same.

Feb 202103Wed

It’s been three whole days (and a bit) since this one was dry-hopped, time to stuff them into bottles.

FG didn’t come down to 1.011 as predicted (managed a comparatively mild 1.016 for 3.68% ABV) which is a pity but airlock activity had ceased and SG was stable for 4 days so it’s not as if I was being premature. Got 7 x 500 ml brown bottles from each FV, added two Fox’s carbonation drops and toped them off with gold crown caps.

First impressions of the taste were good; the dippy one was tasted first straight from the sample jar after taking a reading (huge head!) and had a cloudy consistency with nicely rounded mouth-feel, but also a tiny little bit of twang, which I’m hoping will dissipate with ageing. The hoppy one was tested towards the end of bottling when I didn’t have enough to complete another 500 ml brown bottle, so I drank the dregs instead. Much better taste than the un-hopped version, same mouth-feel but also great if simple aroma of hops with no noticeable twang.

Not sure if it was the hops that I need to thank or if the twang was due to something I did differently with the other vessel, but this half of the experiment was definitely the winner. Next time around I’ll add finishing hops to the whole batch, and may play around with more than one type and / or adding it at different stages.