Bulk Priming - overprime

[shacked]

I've been brewing for a few months now and have done about 10 brews. After getting mixed levels of carbonation with dextrose via the brewer's scoop I decided to move to bulk priming. For the last 5 brews I have bulk primed with no problems, however, I just cracked a blonde ale last night that is substantially over-carbed.

The blonde ale was a kits and bits brew (1.7kg tin, 1kg liquid malt, 500g dextrose, 200g steeped grain and 12g dry hop) that I fermented at 20C for 14 days at bottled at an FG of 1.006 (stable for 5 days).

I bulk primed with 135g of dextrose in 500ml of boiled water which I added to the bulk priming vessel before adding the beer from the FV on top (2m of hose coiled to create the swirling motion).

There was so much trub in the FV that out of 23L of wort I only ended up with 19.7L of beer in the bottles (added them up after bottling). I think I've ended up with a few extra vols of CO2 as a result.

The finished product whilst tasty is very carbonated but not to the point where I think I'll get gushers or bottle bombs.

How can I stop this from happening again?

Cheers!!

 

[jaypes]

Cold crash your FV before racking to your bottling bucket (priming vessel) this will get most of the trub to drop out

 

[JaseH]

How I do it...

I rack into a separate bottling vessel(old fermenter) that I have marked with 1 litre increments. I don't add the priming sugar until I know exactly how much I have in the container to bottle. I then decide what level of carbonation I want for that beer and use a carbonation calculator to tell me how much dex to add based on the exact amount of beer I have to bottle.

I weigh out the dex I need, add it to a small pot with just enough water to dissolve(so its almost a thick paste), heat it on the stove until it starts to boil. Take it off the stove and using the tap on the bottling vessel - pour some of the beer into the pot to help make the dex syrup a bit more watery(so it mixes easier and doesnt just sink straight to the bottom of the bottling vessel). Then gently pour it into the beer and give it a good swirl with a sterilised spoon to ensure its well mixed. As long as your not splashing too much stuff around, O2 is not an issue.

Bottle and your done. I've never had a inconsistently carbed batch yet using this method.

 

[marksy]

My fermenter has 1L of loss. I know how much I put in fv.

 

[yum beer]

Your lower final volume has caught you out.
With your 135gm you now have 6.8gm a litre where at 23 litres you should have had 5.8 g/l.
Thats a fair difference.
As suggested cold crashing helps to get a tighter trub and allows a better indication of how much you have to bottle.
I tend to err on the side of caution and under calculate by a litre, if I get the extra in the bottle its only about .3 g/l difference.
Or Frothie's method certainly will be very accurate.

 

[storeboughtcheeseburgers]

How I do it...

I rack into a separate bottling vessel(old fermenter) that I have marked with 1 litre increments. I don't add the priming sugar until I know exactly how much I have in the container to bottle. I then decide what level of carbonation I want for that beer and use a carbonation calculator to tell me how much dex to add based on the exact amount of beer I have to bottle.

I weigh out the dex I need, add it to a small pot with just enough water to dissolve(so its almost a thick paste), heat it on the stove until it starts to boil. Take it off the stove and using the tap on the bottling vessel - pour some of the beer into the pot to help make the dex syrup a bit more watery(so it mixes easier and doesnt just sink straight to the bottom of the bottling vessel). Then gently pour it into the beer and give it a good swirl with a sterilised spoon to ensure its well mixed. As long as your not splashing too much stuff around, O2 is not an issue.

Bottle and your done. I've never had a inconsistently carbed batch yet using this method.

I do this too.. and I slowly bottle the batch at least for the first half so there is extra time to settle the sugars.

I use a paint pail I configured and manually filled, measured 15-20 litres with a flexi ruler and nico pen. You can get 20L pails bunnings/masters hardware for around 15-20 bucks and $3 for a tap and a brass nut fitting for the inside of the pale to keep it water tight.. I carved out the hole by drilling small holes and slowly filing it back so the tap fits nice and snug.. it was water tight at this point, but put the brass nut on in the inside to ensure it stayed that way.

I go tap to tap from the fermenter (up higher) and bottling bucket (lower) and let gravity do the transfer. You can put a wedge in the front of the fermenter for a few days to elevate it a bit so the trub moves towards the back of the ferm... as for cold crashing, yeh thats an option, but seeing as its winter, I find a cold shed is good enough.

Finding the bucket very useful with the measurements, not just for bottling but all kinds of water and volume measuring. Especially if you are going to move to all grain.

People say to avoid oxygenation, to do your prime solution up with 200ml of sterile water and add it before placing into the bottling bucket.. I think for my next batch I'm going to do a conservative guess (say I think I'll get 19L, I'll put 15L worth of prime solution in the bottom of bucket) before transferring, and then add more to get up to where I am exactly in the bottle bucket after transfer.

 

[shacked]

Thanks for the tips guys. Cold crashing is not really an option for me because I live in a tiny unit and am just brewing in the kitchen with no room for a second fridge.

I'm bottling an amber ale tomorrow and will put a wedge under the primary today and will try adding a little less dex to the bottling bucket (a fermenter) after transferring from the primary.

Cheers!!

 

[burrster]

All if the above info is good and true. Just one more thing to consider how many bottles have you opened? It may just be ONE or TWO bottles slightly over carbed if you didn't stir the wort half way through bottling( the last bottles) and might have slightly more trub too ( creating more nucleation points). Try another bottle to be sure. That is alot of volume to loose due to trub though. on a bad day I loose 2 litres

 

[shacked]

Burrstr, that actually might be a great call. I've tried two (stubbies) bottles and they were both bottled right at the end. I tend to bottle in 6 corona bottles for testers. There was a bit of 'mini krausen' in the last few coronas but not in any other bottles.




I'll try a longneck from the middle of the batch tonight.

Of the 23L I lost about 500ml from hydrometer samples and the rest was because during the transfer to the bottling bucket the primary tap got so clogged with trup and I didn't really know what to do, so I just went with the 20L.

Cheers!!

 

[Deepregret]

How I do it...

I rack into a separate bottling vessel(old fermenter) that I have marked with 1 litre increments. I don't add the priming sugar until I know exactly how much I have in the container to bottle. I then decide what level of carbonation I want for that beer and use a carbonation calculator to tell me how much dex to add based on the exact amount of beer I have to bottle.

I weigh out the dex I need, add it to a small pot with just enough water to dissolve(so its almost a thick paste), heat it on the stove until it starts to boil. Take it off the stove and using the tap on the bottling vessel - pour some of the beer into the pot to help make the dex syrup a bit more watery(so it mixes easier and doesnt just sink straight to the bottom of the bottling vessel). Then gently pour it into the beer and give it a good swirl with a sterilised spoon to ensure its well mixed. As long as your not splashing too much stuff around, O2 is not an issue.

Bottle and your done. I've never had a inconsistently carbed batch yet using this method.

This is pretty much exactly how I've always done it. I'm getting back into homebrewing after a LONG hiatus, so am going back through and refreshing my memory on certain techniques.
The only thing I would do differently is to cool down the sugar mix before adding it to my beer/adding beer to it. The idea of scalding any of my little yeasty soldiers kind of freaks me out!