Cooper's Canadian Blonde

[Uzetaab]

I put down a simple kit today, with Brewer's choice ultra brew. I had meant to use the brew booster, but picked up the wrong packet, I hope I've not made a mistake.

I've also not pitched the yeast yet, I'm waiting for the temp to get down to 25 before I do.

I plan to rack this one for about 4 days, cold crash it for 2, then bulk prime it. I wanted to brew something that I could do fairly quickly so that I can drink it instead of the ginger beer. Figure that I should have this one ready to drink in about 4 weeks.

 

[yum beer]

dont be in a rush to get through stages of fermentation. It will take as long as it takes.

let it get to a steady gravity and then leave it another 2 days before cold crashing...probably 7-10 days primary.
Then cold condition for 4-7 days before bottling. You wil get a much cleaner tasting and clearer beer.

Leave it to bottle condition for at least 4 weeks before getting in to it....3 months should be great.

 

[iralosavic]

It causes no harm whatsoever to leave your beer in primary after fermentation is assumed to be complete - I almost always let it go another week before racking to secondary to cold condition. If you're in a hurry, still wait at least 4 days before you bother to start taking gravity readings. If you are allowing 4 weeks, why not cold condition for 10 days and THEN bulk prime, bottle and store at 22c for the remaining time. I recently CCed an ale for 5 weeks (wasn't a deliberate plan initially) and it still carbed up fine, but was crystal clear too. It was fairly clear after two weeks though. If you are bulk priming, can I assume that you have a second vessle where you're putting the sugar solution that you're siphoning the beer onto? Why not siphon off the primary yeast cake for your 10 day CCing, then back to the vessle used for primary when bulk priming? Your beer will be a bit clearer and still carb up fine, plus you've lost no extra time out of your 4 weeks.

 

[Uzetaab]

Yeah, I bought a cube last week. I was going to rack it at 20 degrees for a few days to get it off the yeast cake, then cold crash it for a few more before siphoning it back into the cleaned and sanitised primary fermentor to bulk prime. All that after steady fg of 3 days in primary of course. Do you think I should skip the racking at 20 and just cold crash it as soon as I rack it?

I figured that if I rack it at 20 first, the yeast will clean up after itself a bit before I crash it to get the yeast to sink.

I've already read that I should try to minimise splashing by using a hose and squeeze the air out of the cube to keep the oxygen at bay. Am I missing anything else?

 

[manticle]

Just rack it the one time when you go to bulk prime. No need to rack before cold conditioning unless you intend the cold phase to be longer than 3-4 weeks.

 

[iralosavic]

Yeah, I bought a cube last week. I was going to rack it at 20 degrees for a few days to get it off the yeast cake, then cold crash it for a few more before siphoning it back into the cleaned and sanitised primary fermentor to bulk prime. All that after steady fg of 3 days in primary of course. Do you think I should skip the racking at 20 and just cold crash it as soon as I rack it?

I figured that if I rack it at 20 first, the yeast will clean up after itself a bit before I crash it to get the yeast to sink.

I've already read that I should try to minimise splashing by using a hose and squeeze the air out of the cube to keep the oxygen at bay. Am I missing anything else?

If you don't already have one, get a siphon - I just use an "easy siphon", which has a manual pump built into it to start it off. This way you can take the beer above the layer of yeast and sediment and stop it siphoning before you get any of the crap. After 10 days in secondary, you'll end up with another yeast cake, which you will leave behind once again when you siphon back to your fermenter (ontop of bulk priming solution), so you can use its tap to hook the racking cane to.

In terms of breaking down 4 weeks, I'd allow 10 in primary at 20c (or whatever temp you plan to ferment at). Coopers yeast sometimes needs to be roused and the temperature raised a bit to keep it moving if it stalls (which it often does). A week in secondary at as close to 0c as possible, then the remaining time back at 22c to carbonate in the bottles. I always bottle a stubble amongst the long necks so that I only waste half as much if I check for carbonation too early. If you store all the bottles in your temp controlled fridge at 22c, you can generally expect a coopers ale yeast to have carbonated fully by 10 days.

 

[ShredMaster]

I think alot of racking is kind of amusing really..... Yes, I rack from the primary to the secondary, do the D-rest and try to cold crash depending on fridge space at the time.

But whenever I do this, I always muse this thought:

Us brewers know that you don't splash the fermented beer around much: oxygen + beer = stale beer. Yet here we are, the primary fills the headspace with CO2 during initial fermentation and we choose to go and move all the almost-perfect beer into another vessel which is currently filled with oxygen. As it fills, there is some minimal splashing at the start then that settles down but the liquid is continuously in motion while it fills, therefore it is churning around and moving the beer around in the fermenter and making more of my beer come into more contact with oxygen than I really want it to.

And then we have another bucket of beer with oxygen in the headspace which will hopefully still have enough yeast and fermentables to give another carpet of CO2 on the top while we leave it still and untouched during whatever we do with secondary (D-rest, CC etc etc).

Doing this the third time and we are tripling the effect.

So, we know that beer + oxygen = bad yet we actually do methods to improve our beer thus exposing to a shitload of oxygen in the process....

I've always wanted to do what Bribie did (I think it was him) and whack a gas-in post on the lid of the secondary and squirt a fair bit of CO2 in there to purge it and THEN rack it tho he did it to use co2 to push the beer from 1 container to the other.


I just think it's kind of amusing in hindsight, especially every time I go and get my tube and racking bucket....


Cheers,
Shred.