Bottling And The First Few Days

[efjay]

Once bottled... I have seen a few things that state bottles should be kept warm (similar to brew temp) for 2, 7 or 10 days... not sure which is appropriate but I guess this probably means slightly longer the better... your comments welcome here folks.

I'd like to understand more of what happens during this time before bottles should be moved to cold conditioning.

Basically I have some bottles in their first few days but do not have a good way to control the temperature without using a light..... I understand the light will affect the beer if exposed for a while so that rules out using it....

So right now it is in a cupboard wrapped in a flannel style sheet. When I'm around I use hot water in a bottle and a wheat bag to add temp to the cupboard but obviously this fluctuates and can't be done when I'm not around so I'm wondering what to expect....

Hopefully it's not as serious as ruining the brew....

Cheers

 

[stephen]

FJ

Don't get too concerned about having an incandescent light as a heat source. The big problem with light affecting beer is the amount of UV in it. Incandescent lamps emit very low levels of UV, and the brown glass that beer bottles are made from will be sufficient to block any UV produced. Conversely, flourescent lights, though a very poor heat source emit quite high levels of UV.

I used to live in Gawler, in SA and, in winter, I would use a 40 Watt light to keep my brew cupboard warm: This was 60-90 bottles and often two fermenters. Never detected any problems. It also pays to insulate the cupboard!

There may be others out there that probably give a more precise report including UV levels etc, but this has worked for me in the past.

Cheers

Steve

 

[Voosher]

Keeping bottles warm after bottling is primarily to ensure carbonation. At 18C most brews will be carbonated within 1-2 weeks.
Most beers continue to improve over the first month in the bottle. Bigger beers continue to improve with longer bottle conditioning.
Keeping bottles cooler will slow down the rate of carbonation but will have no harmful effects on the brew; probably quite the reverse. Many say that longer cooler bottle conditioning produces a better beer.
As a rule of thumb I taste a beer after 2 weeks and weekly thereafter until I feel it's ready to drink. This time of year in Adelaide it's taking at least a month to bring most beers to the drinkable stage.
If you can be patient there's no real need to keep them around the 20C mark.

 

[johnno]

When I bottle I just put my bottles in the shed. Even in Winter they do not take too long to start carbonating.

Earlier this year I moved my Belgian indoors as I was a bit worried after a couple of weeks of nothng happening.

Certainly a warmer environment will carb them up quicker.

I like my beer on the lower end of the carbonation scale. Even though it does not always work out like that.

cheers
johnno

 

[Ross]

Efjay,

A little tip - If you bottle in glass, try doing one bottle in plastic at the same time. You can then easily tell if it's carbonating, as the plastic bottle will go hard under CO2 pressure...

cheers Ross

 

[Trough Lolly]

Once bottled... I have seen a few things that state bottles should be kept warm (similar to brew temp) for 2, 7 or 10 days... not sure which is appropriate but I guess this probably means slightly longer the better... your comments welcome here folks.

I'd like to understand more of what happens during this time before bottles should be moved to cold conditioning. [snip]

G'day efjay,
In addition to all the good advice you've received so far, you wanted to know what happens to the beer during the first couple of weeks after bottling. Well, assuming you have yeast in solution, the yeast will continue to process some of the more dextrinous fermentables in the beer and that's what's commonly referred to as bottle conditioning. You may have heard the term "green beer"? Basically that's beer that's come out of the fermenter and drunk within a couple of days. It may be good enough to drink straight up - and it's hard not to if you have a good beer filter in place - but it certainly won't have had enough time for the residual yeast to further condition and improve the flavour, mouthfeel and overall complexity of the beer.
Yeast are lazy eaters - they go for the sucrose based sugars first since they're more easily converted into carbon dioxide and ethyl alcohol and then the more complex maltose based sugars are consumed.

((Beer geek mode warning!))
Actually I'm being very lazy with that last sentence - yeast cells do not actually consume sucrose as such - sucrose, aka white table sugar, is a disaccharide which comprises a glucose molecule and a fructose molecule that are linked together with a 1.4-glycosidic bond. The yeast uses an enzyme (invertase or beta-fructofuranosidase to be more technically correct!) that cleaves the bond during hydrolysis which results in a solution that has an equal mixture of glucose to fructose. This equimolar solution of monosaccharides is also know as invert sugar.
The conversion of sucrose into its constituent components is shown as follows...

Sucrose + H2O ----> glucose + fructose

but I digress! B)
((beergeek mode ends!!))

Temperature will impact on the final product - and sometimes in a negative way. If you keep the temperature up on the bottled beer, you risk the yeast adding solventy tasting fusels, fruity esters or butterscotch like diacetyl to the beer. So I'd try to store the bottles in a cool dark corner of the house and not get too worried if the temp drops in the bottle. If the bottles get really cold, the worst you can get is a slightly sweet tasting beer as a result of the yeast going dormant and not finishing off the sugars present in the beer. If you continually keep the bottled beer warm, eg, 25 or more degrees C, then I'd expect a well carbonated but possibly flawed flavour profile.
Put it this way, if you store the bottled beer in the same way you fermented it, you should be fine - remember, you typically have the same yeast in the beer all the time so it will react accordingly if you change the temperature that it originally existed at. I hope that made sense!! h34r:
Cheers,
TL

 

[efjay]

Thanks for all the info guys.

I use a mix of glass and plastic bottles so should be ok spotting if they are carbing up.

Thanks for the tech explanation also, I see a number of people on this forum get right into the detail of what happens behind the bubbles...

Cheers

 

[Ash in Perth]

Basically I have some bottles in their first few days but do not have a good way to control the temperature without using a light..... I understand the light will affect the beer if exposed for a while so that rules out using it....

heres my setup. heats well but no direct light on the beer. old fridges are great because they insulate and if its too hot jsut hook the firdge up to the thermostat.

 

[Trough Lolly]

Thanks for all the info guys.

I use a mix of glass and plastic bottles so should be ok spotting if they are carbing up.

Thanks for the tech explanation also, I see a number of people on this forum get right into the detail of what happens behind the bubbles...

Cheers

Yeah, sorry about the ranting and raving, but sometimes you wanna know more than when the bloke who doesn't brew but works in the local HBS says "....I dunno, it just happens, ok?!"

...and of course, that isn't a jab at the fine retailers who participate on this forum!

Cheers,
TL

 

[Trough Lolly]

heres my setup. heats well but no direct light on the beer. old fridges are great because they insulate and if its too hot jsut hook the firdge up to the thermostat.
View attachment 8216

Ash,
Do you have a dimmer on that light? A mate grabbed a cheap two door cupboard from the Govvie surplus shop, lined it with insulation paper (not sure of the name - it's that shiny metallic looking paper that goes under tiles on the roof!!) and fitted a 40W globe (painted black) on a dimmer - it kept a very even temp and was excellent for winter fermenting.

TL

 

[Steve]

Whether it be summer (40 degrees - day temp) or winter (10 degrees day temp)- my bottles go straight onto their shelfs in my laundry. Two weeks and the first lid gets cracked. I honestly cannot tell any difference!
Cheers
Steve

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

Try putting your beer on top of your hot water system if it is inside....nice and warm for botle conditioning :chug:

 

[peas_and_corn]

I just throw the bottles into a set of drawers (bottom two are for conditioning) for at least a month. I have enough beer now so I have the patience to wait Back in the day, I would get so impatient... however, I'd still force myself to give it at least 3-4 weeks.