First time super bare-bones BIAB

ok will do

also this time Im bottling one in plastic so I can see how it expands over time

may even put a pressure gauge on it for fun

 

woke up this morning to an inch of yeast on the trub..they dropped out sometime in the last 12 hours

still hazy of course but looks more like a very hazy beer instead of a milkshake

color isnt my favorite but I suppose normal (beige)

airlock still bubbling but much slower than last night, maybe 1 bubb every 4 seconds, last night more like 1 every 1.5 and peak a couple days ago 1 every second

still small bubbles forming in beer

that is all

 

This pic is last night, and it looks very different than last morning! The beigeness is gone and now its a nice orange with the milkshakey particles gone. Bubbles have slowed to a crawl. Tonight is dry hop night.

Unfortunately its 6" from beer surface to the trub, and its 8" from the hydrometer bottom to say the 1.020 mark. So I cant measure gravity in the fermenter. I really dont want to take a sample and waste it. Also siphoning is messy and risky with my setup for a few reasons and pipetting would take forever for 250ml. So I am not going to confirm fermentation is over with gravity readings. Instead I'll dry hop tonight, and give it 48 more hours, then bottle (and take an FG before the priming sugar)

 

Yeah looks like a refractometer is going to be the tool of choice for taking measurements to confirm end of fermentation.

There werent any other holes in the bag, however I think I may not have a choice here as far as filtering anyway?

Since all the hops were added at flameout, and the time between flameout and pouring into the fermenter is just the cooling ice bath time, which is about 15 minutes, if I filtered (fine wire mesh) the wort then those flameout hops would only have had about 15 minutes in the wort. Would that be okay?

The trub is mostly yeast, I will take a picture and upload it. High flocculating indeed. When the yeast fell the beer appearance changed drastically in a half day.

 

Yes it sure seems that way. I mean the consequences of bottling too early are bottle bombs? That seems pretty unlikely if airlock activity is zilch. Priming sugar activity would dominate right

 

I think the trub today is mostly yeast..but ya before definitely not!

I will do that hopstand next time. I do have a fine mesh strainer (splatterguard) that I used on my first batch to filter out debris on the funnel pour..and there was ALOT

I just dry-hopped. And it turns out...hops float! So instead of plunking in and splashing in the trub like I was worried about, they are slowly dissolving at the surface and will presumably ooze their goodness into the beer, and by the time they get to the trub they will have dissolved from pellet shape to particles! right?

 

Hmmmmm

So I went back a few minutes after dry hopping to see if the hops had dissolved yet.

They had, but were just floating on the surface.

I also noticed they were indistinguishable in color and texture from the ring of green goo stuck to the top of the carboy.

So I sanitized my racking cane and gave them some stirs. Definitely created a shower of particles in the beer. Tried to to disturb the ring of green goo (although now I wonder if that even matters)

Once I got the racking cane out I tasted the stuff on it..hmm..tastes like weak hops. Definitely got some tannins going on (still tasting some lingering bitterness as I write this..and apparently thats not "proper" although it does seem tasty). Doesnt taste gross or weird though. Of course not sure if what I tasted is the hops I just put in, the ring of goo on the carboy, or both.

 

hmmm

The top (yeast) section of the trub has grown maybe 20% in the last day or so (1/8th to 3/16" maybe?). And there are still bubbles going, although much slower. Maybe 10 to 20 times slower than peak. I want to say that adding the hops and stirring started something..but I cant really tell because maybe it wasn't done when I did that.

If I can't take gravity measurements to determine end of fermentation, can I observe the trub and see when it stops growing to determine something?

 

Bottled!

Got 0.73 gallons in the bucket. Wow...okay I need to be getting a 12 pack out of these batches, its just too much work for 7.5 beers. So maybe I can get a 1.5 gallon setup or something. Why didn't anyone suggest I move up to a bigger batch size!! Help!! If only someone had told me earlier to make bigger batches I would have been saved. Now its too late.

Just kidding. About the telling me part. I think I will see if I can do a bigger batch size. All I need is a bigger fermenter really.
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The trub measures almost 2.5"!! So thats where my missing beer is. I had way more liquid this time into the fermenter but less out than last time.

Final gravity 1.010, OG 1.072...8.12% ABV? 85% attenuation? Hmm. I think my first measurement wasnt so accurate. Also FG was at about 75F

Added 17 grams of priming sugar.

Note to self: final bubble rate, 1 per 25 seconds

Tasted a small amount. Do I detect an ethanol burn? Cant smell it. Lots of different flavors. Not like the last one. My palate isnt refined enough to detect grassy. I can just barely distinguish between hop bitterness and tannins.

Added an experimental bottle with a pressure gauge just for fun. Something to do with the hydrometer sample. That bottle has had its beer poured THREE times and been in contact with the funnel, hydrometer, and hydrometer cylinder. Will be interesting to see if it gets oxidation damage. Should be an infected purple monster right?

I see three distinct layers in the trub.And also a strange dip like jupiters spot (see pics).

At least four distinct smells throughout the bottling process:

-ever present stale beer smell, presumably from the spillage during bottle filling and what not

-the smell of the fermenter..smells like I wish the beer would smell, like juicy hops were added 5 minutes ago

-the beer smell..(bottle bucket)..hmmmmm...I slurped that tiny amount in the bottle so I guess I like it. But it doesn't really smell juicy. The fermenter smell is misleading.

-the yeast smell (fermenter after racking) lots of hops and a not great yeast smell

 

7psi at 12 hours

significant white trub in bottles

 

I didnt even think of that (adding to bottle bucket). I really think I could have afforded it this time too because the ABV is probably higher than I wanted anyway.

So what I did is I went and boughteded myself another 1 gallon glass carboy! Only 6 bucks at more beer! And eyeballing it I should be able to fit two of them in the temperature controlled fridge. I think this will be the sweet spot. Combine the bottle bucket top-off with twice the fermenters and I really should not need more beer than that. 22 bottles? Yikes. I dont even have 22 bottles.

And yes to less sediment. I totally forgot to use my fine mesh strainer on the wort pour into the fermenter. On my first batch, that caught a TON of stuff. Its just a splatter shield for pans on the range but I may try to modify it into a funnel for ease of use.

So just curious..if I was to take that significant amount of trub in the fermenter and squeeze all the juice out of it..what would it taste like? Lets say a gentle squeeze.