New method for bulk priming in primary fermenter

[bry2]

For those who are like me and only use one container for the whole fermentation, conditioning and bottling process; I have just tried a new (may not be new but I have not seen it used before) method for bulk priming in the fermenter that ensures even carbonation with clear beer.

The biggest problem with bulk priming in the fermenter just before bottling is if you don't stir enough you don't get even carbonation in your bottles and if you stir too much, you cloud up the beer. If you have a cold crash fridge/freezer, you can get around this by using the following procedure:

• Ferment as normal (I leave it for 2 weeks)
• Dissolve your priming sugar in boiling water and then cover and let it cool to room temperature.
• Cold crash your beer (I set it at 0.5 deg C).
• When your beer is cold enough, pour in the the priming mixture and give it a good stir. No need to worry about disturbing the trub. (I did it when the beer was at less than 5 deg C)
• Leave your beer to cold crash and settle out the particles as normal (I leave for 6-7 days).
• At the end of this time, bottle your beer while it is still cold.
• Let your beer come up to above 18 deg C for bottle fermentation (carbonation) over 3 weeks then chill and serve.

So far I have tried 4out of 30 PET bottles and has resulted in even carbonation with very clear beer.

As an addition to this procedure, if you use gelatine, you could add this at the same time you add the priming mixture.

Note: I have not tried this with lager yeast so no guarantees there.

Enjoy. I hope it helps someone.

 

[Truman42]

I would have thought the cold crash would cause the sugar solution to drop out of suspension. Certainly no expert on this and just guessing thats what would happen, but it appears not from your results.
Interested to hear from others on this as it certainly saves racking to a secondary and risking infection etc.

 

[treefiddy]

You may still get stratification if you leave it for too long.

This has happened to me when filling 2 cubes from the kettle. One cube was stronger than the other, which was supprising given the time scale.

 

[431neb]

Has some merit I think. Requires patience but seems like a workable idea.

I wonder if the sugar solution requires cooling though. When I bulk prime I add the hot dex' solution to the bottom of a clean fermenter and siphon (sorta with a hose on the tap) onto the hot sugar solution. If the hose is positioned correctly - ie all the excess hose is coiled in the bottom of the second vessel - the gentle swirling seems to incorporate the solution well enough. I'm getting distracted though. My point is that I think the hot solution will mix into the unprimed beer just fine. Others may have tried and know better.

I wonder if a few pellets of hops in the priming solution might be an interesting "dry hop" / steep for a bit of extra hop kick before bottling. With your method the hops would settle out in the trub.

 

[citizensnips]

I like the sound of this, my only concern would be with the sugar becoming uneavenly distributed like Truman said, however if you've done it and it works then good stuff, you may be a pioneer here.

 

[bry2]

I would have thought the cold crash would cause the sugar solution to drop out of suspension. Certainly no expert on this and just guessing thats what would happen, but it appears not from your results.
Interested to hear from others on this as it certainly saves racking to a secondary and risking infection etc.

Yeah all bottles have an even amount of pressure (from squeezing) and as mentioned before, my first 4 bottles have had perfect carbonation.

I know that when you cool the beer, the solubility of the sugar in the water will reduce, however, I believe it does not reach saturation (the point where the sugar comes out of solution) for the following two reasons:

• Water already has a very high solubility for sugar.
• When you pour the mixture into your beer you are going from a highly concentrated sugar solution to a very low concentrated solution (23 L of beer in my case) and so even if the solubility reduces, so does the concentration.

Has some merit I think. Requires patience but seems like a workable idea.

I wonder if the sugar solution requires cooling though. When I bulk prime I add the hot dex' solution to the bottom of a clean fermenter and siphon (sorta with a hose on the tap) onto the hot sugar solution. If the hose is positioned correctly - ie all the excess hose is coiled in the bottom of the second vessel - the gentle swirling seems to incorporate the solution well enough. I'm getting distracted though. My point is that I think the hot solution will mix into the unprimed beer just fine. Others may have tried and know better.

I wonder if a few pellets of hops in the priming solution might be an interesting "dry hop" / steep for a bit of extra hop kick before bottling. With your method the hops would settle out in the trub.

I agree, pouring the hot mixture straight in would probably be fine as the volume of hot water is negligable in comparison to the cold beer. In my case, I boiled the water and added the sugar at the same time as reducing the set temp on the temperature controller so I had to wait until the beer cooled anyway.

With respect to the hops, I have actually done that before; steeped them and then added to the cold beer. Turned out fine.

 

[[email protected]]

I have been contemplating the merits/plausibility of doing exactly this. I couldn't find anything on this method searching the forum last night but somehow stumbled upon this by googling tonight. Interested to hear how people have gone doing this and if the OP has continued to find it successful?

 

[schtev]

I don't see why you wouldn't just rack the beer off the yeast into a bottling bucket with your priming solution and save yourself a whole lot of cold crashing time.

 

[The Judge]

What about over-engineering this (I love tinkering): use a little brown pump to recirculate your fermented wort, and with a small diameter tube attached to the recirc pipe, siphon in your sugar solution via venturi. A slow recirc shouldn't disturb your yeast/trub.

 

[Danscraftbeer]

Oxygen is the potential enemy. Bottled beer does get that bit of oxygen in the headspace.
I'm unsure how much aeration you can get away with before it spoils your beer or makes it taste like cardboard.