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Bottling with wort

dtapke

Grandmaster Brewer
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Portage, Wisconsin
So, I'm not one to bottle. I hate bottling. why would anyone bottle!? That being said, as I push myself towards being a better brewer and forward to potentially entering some beers into competitions, I've decided to bottle condition some tripel I recently brewed. Basically i had 12 gallons of it, 4 gallons in a keg, 4 gallons to bottles, and 4 gallons to by brewing partner. My 4 gallons kegged i'm going to fine with gelatin (never done) his 4 gallons kegged wont be fined, and then 4 gallons to bottles will be done with fresh yeast, and starter wort.

I pressure can starter wort every so often, I can it at 1.080 so i can blend with water to get 1.036 or so when running starters. this reduces the number of times I have to run the pressure canner.

So, my question is, if i were to bottle with this, could i just use the appropriate amount of starter wort at 1.080 that would equate to the appropriate amount of dme in a calculator such as what is offered by beersmith?

If that's the case it would seem that 1.2L of 1.080 wort would equate to the "DME required" to carbonate 4 gallons of beer to 3.5 volumes of co2. (9.13oz dme per carb calc vs 9oz dme required to make a 1.2L 1.080 "starter")


Is there an easier way of doing this? lol
 
If your brew is still reasonable fresh, (in a secondary for less than 4 or 5 months) there should be enough yeast still in suspension to carbonate and bottle condition without the need for adding additional yeast. I would caution against adding yeast for bottle conditioning as this may give some "off" flavors as well as increase the likelihood of "Bottle Bombs"!

I've recently gone back to bottling for the purpose of storage and sharing my brews. Once you have a good stock of clean bottles with labels removed, bottling isn't nearly as bad!
 
I have a Ukeg for bring beer to share.

As far as yeast goes, I've heard of more issues with yeast off flavors produced when NOT pitching fresh yeast than when using the yeast in suspension. Especially when you're talking about a 9%abv beer.

Bottle bombs generally only happen if one adds too much sugar or has a poor distribution of sugar. 10b yeast cells in a bottle would produce the same carbonation as .5b yeast cells given the same amount of sugars, unless I'm totally wrong on how fermentation works.

I know a common issue for bottle bombs is not getting the sugar mixture homogenized in the beer, producing a handful of beers that get the bulk of the sugar, and a handful of beers that get essentially no sugar. This will be mitigated in my process by pouring the wort into the keg that the beer is currently stored in(on 3psi to maintain a seal only), and giving it a good shaking. At which point i'll use a counter pressure filler pushing with light co2 pressure.
 
I thought i could find the direct info on in, but I recall reading that westmalle inoculates their beer at bottling at 2m cells per ml for re fermentation in the bottle. Can't seem to find where i found that, but it seems that its common practice of trappist breweries.
 
I suspect that dme and 1080 wort would not be directly comparable in terms of fermentable sugars so Beersmith carbonation tool may not be much help.

The easiest way I have found of doing this is just to add a carefully measured 1/2 teaspoon caster sugar to each 500ml bottle.  I have simplified my priming process having had 2 unsucessful batches of bottles using Beersmith carbonation tool; all were way under carbonated.  Simplest seems best to me at the moment  :)
 
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