Basically your process is fine and will work 10 times out of 10 and give you perfect beer over time. Don't worry about being too careful when it comes to sanitation. The most important thing in brewing bar none is sanitation. Get that wrong and the perfect brewday, recipe etc is ruined. Taking a sample at any stage is simple, follow the usual sanitation procedures and use either a "wine thief" or even a Turkey baster, you can measure the sample to check progress, just don't return the sample to the fermentor or any subsequent vessel.molehill wrote:
Its once fermentaion is underway that I struggle. I am still a little unsure when it comes to transfering to secondary FV and bottling. Let me explain my process and please advise if I have misunderstood the process.
1. Once brew is complete the FV is placed in my beer fridge and temp maintained at 21c for 5 days. No finings added at any time now (made that mistake last brew).
2. I transfer to a secondary FV for 3 days then bottle using a bottling stick. All necessary sterilising carefully followed.
3. Place bottles back into beer fridge and leave for 7 days at 21c to encourage final yeast and carbonisation to occur. Then store at 10-12c for 3 weeks before first tasting.
I am still to work out how to safely carry out AG readings between 2nd FV and bottling. I seal the FV tap in a clean plastic bag and rap it tight with elastic band to reduce tap contamination and only use this at bottling stage. I am worried about removing lid and scooping out a sample for testing. Maybe I am being too careful. I am also worried that my bottling method may leave any settled sediment too loose making it difficult to pour.
Again thanks for your advice.
However, there are opportunities to refine your process a little. The amount of time a brew needs to ferment is not determined by the calendar. Recipe, yeast, temperature and technique will all have an influence on this so your ability to track the fermentation is important. There has been a few threads concerning transferring the brew to a vessel other than the fermentor and the way in which the vessels have been labelled has caused a little confusion. Current thinking is that there is no benefit to transferring your brew to another vessel until the fermentation is completely finished, the so called secondary. This is not the moment that the brew reaches its theoretical finishing gravity as yeast needs time to clear up some of the "off flavours" that can be produced during fermentation. The rule of thumb is 3 consecutive readings the same over 3 days. Removing the brew from the yeast before the fermentation is finished can cause a number of problems, not least is higher attenuation and clearing problems. At this point racking off to another vessel for either bottling immediately from or for further conditioning is a very useful stage to include. At this point you can decide to use finings to accelerate clearing but if your patient enough it will clear over time. This is also the stage when the most efficient and safest form of priming takes place, by introducing a syrup form of sugar at this point you can ensure an even mix of the right amount.
One final comment on your sanitation, I find it useful to have something like a bottle garden sprayer filled with a no-rinse sanitiser to spray things like your bottling tap a few minutes before using.
age according to your tastes.
