Mini BIAB - racking

[Anth M]

Hey brewers,

The first mini biab I did I bottled straight from the FV and used carb drops - nice beer, pretty happy with it. For the 2nd one, I took the advise from my LHBS and added dextrose to a second FV, did the whirlpool thing and bottled from that. It was a bit annoying in terms of loss (lots of gunk coming down the tube by the end) but I ended up with about 7L (lost 1L from memory). What do you guys do? Is it a waste of time if you're generally bottling in same size bottles or does it actually improve the quality of the beer?

Tips & advice much appreciated.

Cheers

 

[GFHomebrew]

Hey welcome.

I dont bottle but I used to just bottle straight from FV when I did I just cold crashed prior to bottling to try and compress trub. I see alot of brewers here transfer to bottling bucket add priming sugar usually dextrose and then bottle.
See what throws up.

 

[Anth M]

Hey welcome.

I dont bottle but I used to just bottle straight from FV when I did I just cold crashed prior to bottling to try and compress trub. I see alot of brewers here transfer to bottling bucket add priming sugar usually dextrose and then bottle.
See what throws up.

Thanks mate.

Do you cold crash all beer types? I've read about it but never tried, maybe next batch.

 

[GFHomebrew]

Thanks mate.

Do you cold crash all beer types? I've read about it but never tried, maybe next batch.

Yeah sure do. I do it mainly to help settle out all the crud in suspension and I recon it helps compact the trub cake at bottom a bit. That helps when racking to keep back unwanted floaties. But time will do this for you chilling just helps to speed up floculation.

 

[Mark Farrall]

Bottle straight from the fermentor after adding some sugar solution to the bottles (500 ml bottles and small batches, so it's not a big deal). Don't have any problem with the boil gunk, but going back to bagging my dry hops as the tap I use on my fermenter is a bit low for the amount of hop that half my batches have.

 

[Anth M]

Bottle straight from the fermentor after adding some sugar solution to the bottles (500 ml bottles and small batches, so it's not a big deal). Don't have any problem with the boil gunk, but going back to bagging my dry hops as the tap I use on my fermenter is a bit low for the amount of hop that half my batches have.

Thanks Mark.

How do you do your sugar? Another option the LHBS dude said was to add the dextrose straight to my FV and stir in gently then bottle from that (so no bottling bucket required). Is it all swings and roundabouts in the end? I'm just looking to cut out unnecessary steps if I can't tell the difference.

Cheers mate

 

[Mark Farrall]

I use the priming calculator on the site here to work out g/L of sugar I need and have that on the recipe. For the temp in the calculator I just use the top temp I get to during fermentation.

When I bottle I work out how many litres I'm bottling, boil some water, add however much sugar it needs and then 10mL of boiled water for each bottle to one of the bottles. Then use one of those cheap 10mL syringes from Chemist Warehouse to transfer 10mL to the other bottles. As I'm small scale it's not a pain in the arse. If it was a larger batch I'd probably go back to the bottling bucket approach.

Edit: it's the syringe with the soft plastic attachment that makes it easy to take the solution out of a bottle

 

[Anth M]

I use the priming calculator on the site here to work out g/L of sugar I need and have that on the recipe. For the temp in the calculator I just use the top temp I get to during fermentation.

When I bottle I work out how many litres I'm bottling, boil some water, add however much sugar it needs and then 10mL of boiled water for each bottle to one of the bottles. Then use one of those cheap 10mL syringes from Chemist Warehouse to transfer 10mL to the other bottles. As I'm small scale it's not a pain in the arse. If it was a larger batch I'd probably go back to the bottling bucket approach.

Edit: it's the syringe with the soft plastic attachment that makes it easy to take the solution out of a bottle

That's a nifty idea with the syringe - haven't heard that before. That's gotta be less farting around than using a bottling bucket, think I'll give it a go. Thanks Mark!

 

[skyblue67]

I bottle all my beer, 20-25lt per brew so quite a lot of bottles. I add the priming solution to a bottling bucket, transfer the beer from the FV and bottle with a bottling wand on the end of an auto syphon. This is much quicker than using a bottling wand attached to the tap on the bottling bucket.

 

[Benman]

I always use a bottling bucket and also crush cold before bottling
adding sugar to the to the fermentor and steering move a lot of the trub to the bottle
that's a step i wouldn't skip

 

[Anth M]

Thanks guys.