I've been reading The Joy Of Homebrewing, and am now two weeks into the process of brewing my first batch. The experience has raised a lot of questions, some of which I can't seem to answer with the book. 1) If I buy a kettle with a spigot (ball-valve), can I also use this as a bottling bucket? I realized that when I make the priming sugar, I could use this kettle, mix the beer into back into it, and then use the spigot to bottle it from there (as opposed to a siphon). Would there be any disadvantage to doing it this way? 2) Taking the above one step further, could I use also my kettle (with lid, obviously) as a secondary fermentor if I wanted to? (I'm trying to cut down not only on cost, but on having my condo taken over with a ton of equipment.) 3) If I invested in this type of kettle, I may go for broke and get one with the thermometer. What I'm wondering though, is when cooling the wort can I dunk a kettle like this into an ice bath? I'm mainly wondering if it would be easy to break the thermometer this way, or if it's simply not recommended. 4) What is the disadvantage to using a plastic carboy? (I see the majority of brewers use glass, so I'm guessing there's a disadvantage.) Is the issue that sanitizer breaks down the plastic over time? 5) Are hydrometers and bottle-washers really worth it? Those are the two things I keep seeing on the "must-have" list, but I can't tell. 6) This isn't related to equipment, but I have another question about disturbing the beer while it's fermenting. I've been a little over-zealous in checking out the beer each day (just out of curiosity, to see how it's changing), and have on occasion taken it out of the closet to look at it. Am I shooting myself in the foot here? I try not to jostle it too much, but I'm wondering if I'm really supposed to leave it be the entire time. Thanks in advance for any advice!
A kettle is really not suitable for secondary or bottling, for oxygen infiltration and sanitation reasons. I think most people with thermometers on their kettles are not chilling with ice baths, i.e. they are using immersion chillers, plate chillers, counterflow chillers, etc. Interesting question though. The disadvantage to plastic is that it can scratch and thus be harder to clean and sanitize. It is also slightly O2 permeable, and generally not recommended for long term conditioning. Sanitizer does not break it down A hydrometer (or a refractometer) is a 'must.' Bottle washers (i.e. the jet thingies) are not. Jostling isn't going to hurt your beer while it's fermenting. But why do you have to move it to look at it? It's also a good idea to not open the fermenter any more than necessary. Edit: You didn't ask, but somewhat related to #6... you generally should keep your beer out of the light, particularly sunlight. I do this by using an inverted black trash bag to cover the fermenter.
I understand your space issues, but there are limits. My two cents: 1) In theory you could. I like to keep my equipment separated, so I have brew kettles and fermenting/bottling buckets. 2) No. Get a plastic fermenting bucket and a bottling bucket. 3) Ice bath should work without damaging the thermometer, though you may want to consider a wort-chiller. Makes like MUCH easier. 4) Not sure about plastic carboy, but I ferment in my plastic bucket all the time. No problems. 5) Hydrometer = YES this is a vital tool Bottle washer=helpful, but not necessary 6) Not a problem, in all likelihood. I try not to move my fermenting bucket too much, though on occasion it's unavoidable. Things will settle back to the bottom after time, anyhow.
I don't have a bottle washer. If the bottles are that dirty, I recycle them and use a new one (read: used commercial brewery bottle). Bottles can be gotten plenty clean with hot water and a bottle brush. Even then, if it's not easily cleaned with hot water, I'll probably recycle it rather than put a lot of effort into scrubbing with a brush. You should have several gravity meters. They break easily and you need the info they provide. I keep no less than two on hand at all times.
I don't see why you couldn't use a stainless kettle as a bottling bucket. The fact that it has a lid makes it even better than the non-lidded plastic bottling bucket I used for years. Stainless would not be O2 permeable and the spigot is fine-I've used plastic spigots on my buckets for over 20 years. As for secondary there's really few times you even need it. Leave your beer longer in primary, dry hop in primary after most of the fermentation is done, and save yourself a step.
One thing I'm not sure if anyone mentioned is that you can stack buckets (fermentors and bottling buckets) VERY easily. So that is a benefit and will save you space.
I'd check into the thermometer being able to handle a shock of 212F to 40-50F water. Sounds like a recipe for broken glass but it might be tempered glass capable of handling the shock. You could bottle out of the kettle but you would still need the siphon to rack out of the fermentor into the kettle and still need a bottling wand to gravity fill beer from the kettle into the bottle. You don't want to just pour the beer into the kettle and fill the bottles right off the kettle port like you're filling a growler. That's a recipe for tremendous oxygenation and crappy tasting beer. I'd say hold off on buying the top of the line kettle at this point. If you really want to watch fermentation, get a better bottle. It's PET and shaped like a carboy but no risk of turning into a pile of dangerous shattered glass. They are reasonably priced and hold up very well. You can also buy them with ports on the side so you can hook up tubing and gravity pour into your bottling bucket if you choose. It is not necessary to get the port as siphoning beer out of the mouth is very easy. However, there is nothing wrong with fermenting in an HDPE bucket and using the same kind of bucket for a bottling bucket. They store together with minimal space. You can't see what's going on but they are cheap, efficient and take up little space.
Any reason the kettle would be different in this case than a bottling bucket? I was under the impression that one bottles from the bucket simply by pouring directly into the bottles. There must be something I'm not understanding about this process..
Typically you will use something called a bottling wand, though you could still attach that to your kettle One issue with a kettle is you will need some way to measure the volume of the racked beer so you know how much priming sugar, so you can either calibrate the pot (scratch inside) or use a sight glass. the sight glass route i think would be kinda hard to sanitize though I wouldnt use a kettle for a secondary fermentor, and most beers dont really need a secondary anyway for fermentors you might think about getting the ported better bottles, as they are very easy to rack from Kettle - are you using a turkey fryer for boiling wort? and are you doing extract? If you use a turkey fryer I would just get an old keg, have the top cut off, and add a ball valve at the botom, all very cheap things to do compared to something like a blichman
Forgive all the questions, but if I brew five gallons, wouldn't I use enough priming sugar for five gallons? Or do I "lose" a lot of the beer during fermentation or something? I haven't heard of needing to measure the volume of racked beer before.
You'll leave a bit of beer with the yeast in the fermenter when you rack to the bottling bucket. Also, you'll likely leave some wort behind in the kettle with the hops/trub. There's lots of places in the process where you can lose volume if you don't compensate for it. It's one of those 'better safe than sorry' things, cause you could over prime your bottles if you don't realize your volume is low when you add the priming sugar. Though, if you're doing partial boils and topping up to 5 gallons in the fermenter, the bottling volume likely won't be too variable for you.
I thought I might be the only person to see that as a reasonable solution for someone trying to save space and $ on equipment. My only thought is that ball valves have the potential for contamination if pulling quadruple-duty on a kettle/secondary/fermenter/bottling bucket....might be solvable with a little extra work. It's nice to see someone new here, bring up issues I've all but made my mind up on.
FWIW, I put calibration marks for volumes on my carboys, and have never used the marks on my bottling bucket to determine priming sugar amounts. I prefer to add the sugar solution into the bottling bucket first, then rack on top of that, so that the priming sugar gets mixed in without a bunch of additional stirring.
