19 Bottles of Beer
Friday I bottled some of the beer I’ve been making. Last week I had racked the beer to the secondary fermenter, but I had five gallons of beer, and only a 3 gallon secondary fermenter. How this had slipped past me before I am not sure. Needless to say, 2 gallons of beer had to remain in the primary fermenter. This in itself isn’t a bad thing, since many people advocate not using secondary fermenters at all, and just bottling straight from the primary.
One problem with leaving the beer on the primary fermenter is that is that beer likes to condition in bulk for as long as possible. Conditioning is the part of the fermenting that takes place after all the sugar has already been consumed. Most of the yeast goes dormant, and the little that is left runs around cleaning up byproducts of fermentation, many of which aren’t very palatable. This improves the flavor over time.
However, only a small portion of the yeast is doing the conditioning work, most of the yeast has gone dormant and fallen to the bottom of the fermenter. If you let beer condition for a long time in the primary fermenter, then all this dormant yeast and precipitated protein on the bottom of the fermenter (called the “trub”) can cause trouble. The proteins can get shaken back up into the beer, potentially adding undesirable flavors. These proteins can also be eaten by yeast that hasn’t gone dormant yet, which produces unpleasant flavors. Also, the yeast can autolyze, which is a form of yeasty suicide, which releases so much disgusting stuff into the beer that it usually becomes undrinkably bad.
Moving the beer to a secondary fermenter keeps only the small amount of active yeast that is still in suspension, and leaves behind the potentially trouble causing trub. Now conditioning can progress unhindered. I had to bottle the beer that was still on the primary fermenter this weekend, before something bad happened. However, the beer that I got into the secondary will be bottled next weekend, benefiting from another week in fermentation. My hope is that the two sub-batches will both be of equal quality. Theoretically, the beer that made it to the secondary will be a little better, but that is just theory. This is actually a good thing, because it will give me an opportunity to directly compare beer that had a chance to ferment on a secondary fermenter with beer that had gone straight from the primary to bottles. With something as variable-rich as brewing, theory sometimes has to take a back seat to a simple taste test.
Anyway, I’ll probably be using the bottles as gifts for people who aren’t in St. Louis, because of their universal portability. For the St. Lunatics, I’ll be kegging the beer, saving me the trouble of saving up, cleaning and washing another 30 bottles. I’ve ordered a small keg-like system, called a Tap-A-Draft that uses 6 liter bottles and a small CO2 injector system that is used to keep 15 PSI on the beer at all times, keeping it fresh and carbonated. Instead of using big tanks like real kegging systems, this one uses 8 gram cartridges. The system is pretty cheap, and has gotten some very good reviews. It looks ideal for someone like myself who wants to keg beer, but doesn’t have the money or the space for ‘real’ kegs. It can theoretically ‘force carbonate’ beverages, which means taking an uncarbonated beverage and exposing it to high CO2 pressures while chilled in the fridge, with the effect of carbonating the beverage overnight. However, its ability to do that is suspect, because typically more pressure and better regulators are required for such a process. However, I will be keg/bottle conditioning my beer anyway, which means adding a bit of corn sugar to the brew immediately before bottling or kegging. The few remaining yeasties eat the sugar and make a tiny bit of alcohol and some CO2. Because they are now sealed tight in the bottle or keg instead of being in a fermenter with a bubbling airlock, the CO2 they create carbonates the beverage automagically. The process takes between 2 and 3 weeks. After that, the beverage is either consumed all at once, as in a bottle, or consumed in a system that can maintain CO2 pressure on the container so that the carbonation isn’t lost, like the Tap-A-Draft. I’ll let people know how the system works once I get it.
Sunday 25 May 2003 | Sam | Brewing, Other
when i brewed, i kegged. i used the stainless steel 5 gallon soda kegs (i had two), and a 5lb CO2 tank that had one regulator and a spliter so that i could carbonate to kegs at once.
this is the way to go for forced carbonation. the kegs themselves can handle about 3 times the amount of preassure you need for forced carbonating (i used 30lbs – which was as high as the regulator would go)... and depending on the type of beer, i would force carbonate for 2-3days. usually just two. if it’s not enough, you can reseal the keg and let go for another day.
kegging like this meant i had to buy a chest freezer (7.2 cubic foot) and a fridge converter, but this also meant i could brew lagers, which in retrospect was very much worth it.
Saddly my apartment would not fit an additional fridge, otherwise I’d be all over a 5 gallon corny keg system. Bottles are still nice because they can be sent out as gifts/trades much easier, but they are a pain in the butt.
I just got the tap-a-draft in the mail today, and it all looks good, so I’m going to give it a try and see how it works!