Morebeer All Grain Pliny Clone - Slow/Stuck Fermentation

So, you moved your fermentation bucket (to a table top?) and only let it sit for an hour? My homebrewing practice is to let the primary fermenter sit for a minimum of 24 hours before transferring to my bottling bucket.

There is no way to quantify this aspect. Needless to say but you want zero bubbles when transferring beer.

I personally do not use an auto-siphon. I only transfer once.

I personally place my racking cane (with an orange colored standoff) into the trub. When I am done the transfer I have about 1/2 inch of liquid on top of the trub.

I personally do not pour the hydrometer sample back into the beer. I place the beer in a glass in my refrigerator and do a sample tasting the following day.

I personally would not recommend this; I keep my primary bucket perfectly level.

Yes, tubing is very cheap.

Did I properly address all of your queries? If not, let me know.

Cheers!

 

You should bottle condition as usual; a minimum of 2 weeks to permit the beer to carbonate. If the 'extra' air will result in 'extra' oxidation it will take a while to notice this effect. As a precaution, if you are so motivated, you might want to take steps to consume this batch quickly. Maybe schedule a party about 1 month post bottling day.

I was responding to your statement of: "Had to repump and definitely introduced some air bubbles into the siphoned beer". This sounded like a second attempt at siphoning to me.

I fill my racking cane/tube with tap water and let this liquid 'run out' to start the siphon. I have no personal experience with using an auto-siphon but I have read folks post that when they use their auto-siphon they see bubbles in the tube from the pumping action. If this occurs it is less than ideal.

I understand your reticence here but my personal process is to just gently place the racking cane, with the stand-off, into the bucket such that the it rest on top of the trub. The best I can report here is that after 20+ years of brewing (and 375 batches so far) this works for me. You need to brew in a manner that is consistent with your personal comfort level though.

Cheers!

 

@CooperVerde When I move the primary to transfer, even though I originally learned to let that sit an hour at least, I usually just start it earlier. As long as your careful and not splashing around, you won't disturb too much.

If you are concerned with getting too much trub in the bottling bucket, I have had success covering the autosiphon with a grain bag, it act as a filter.

I tip the buckets to get the max out about halfway through the transfer, I prop one side up on a book, it's very easy. If you are struggling because the bottling wand is already attached at this point, just don't attach the wand until the transfer is complete and you are ready to bottle. You can touch the tubing with your hands at that point because it won't contact your beer anymore.

And re: the bubbles, it happens. Try to minimize it as best you can by keeping the intake on your racking cane below the level of beer, when it starts pulling air, stop the transfer. You're risking oxidation throughout the bottling process. Just try to keep it at an absolute minimum and if a particular bottle is particularly oxidized, drink that one first.

If you have an autosiphon there is no need to use a regular siphon. Regualr siphons just need an extra bit of care to start, you can try it out yourself if your curious. It's a fine skill to have if your autosiphon breaks. There are several ways to start a siphon, all of them involve creating negative pressure and then placing the output below the input. With an autosiphon, a pump creates that pressure. With @JackHorzempa's water method, gravity does (fill the hose with water, holding the tubing in a "U" shape, then place the input in your beer and your output to your vessel being mindful that the water doesn't flow back the other way into your beer-- and when it flows beer start collecting). Another way is to suck the siphon to start it, there you use your inhalation to create negative pressure -- that way is unsanitary though only use that when you are stealing someones gas.

 

Hi, Copper (@CooperVerde)

@JackHorzempa and @ssam answered your questions very well, so I'll be brief. I use an auto-siphon like you, but my fermentor is a carboy. A nice feature about a carboy is that the center of the bottom is raised about a half inch above the lowest part of the bottom where most of the trub will settle, so that center area is where my intake is placed for the siphoning process. Sure, I get some hop trub into my bottling bucket, but I find that a lot of it is on the bottom of the bottling bucket when I'm finished bottling. A bit sloppy? Yes, but it hasn't presented any problem for me when drinking the beer. Just pour the bottle carefully, which you'll want to do anyway with the yeast that also settles out to the bottom of the bottle. The Pliny clone does have a lot of trub because of the heavy dry-hopping so I did end up with more of it in the bottling bucket than what I get from a beer that is not dry-hopped.

I don't try to tip my fermentor to maximize by beer quantity, but I do tip (prop up) my bottling bucket toward the spigot to maximize the amount of beer during the bottling process. My spigot has about an inch of dead space in the bucket below where the spigot pierces the side of the bucket, and that's where a lot of that trub settles, but I'm careful to leave most of it in that dead space. I also mark that last bottle that gets filled from the bottom of the bucket as the bottle that will be the first one to drink when testing for the progress of the carbonation, so it's a test beer anyway.

As for your concern about oxidation from the siphon bubbles, my position on that is that you have created a closed system when starting this siphoning process because your intake is below the surface of the beer where there is no air, and as soon as the outflow tube is covered by the beer, this completes the closed system. If you have gently used your auto-siphon during the priming stroke, you should not introduce much if any air at that time. So I think the churning created by the movement of the liquid is creating bubbles that are most likely CO2 from the fermentation process coming out of solution, not air. But that's just my theory (excuse) to overlook this as an issue. And then I also rationalize that if any of the bubbles are air that contains oxygen, the oxidation process takes so long to show up that I'll have the beer drank before it can happen. I don't brew any beers with the intent to age them, so I've never experienced oxidation in my beers. So don't get overly concerned about that issue. Keep in mind that we are practicing a level of science here when we homebrew, but science does not have to be so precise when it's only homebrew. If you are going to enter competitions, or if you are a commercial brewer, then more care is justified, but just have fun with this hobby, especially while you are learning it, and you can add more precision later as circumstances warrant.

You had one other question about taking a beer sample for your FG reading. The first beer that flows from my bottling bucket goes into a pint glass to about 8 ounces. This first beer through the tubing also 'washes' out the tubing so it is a test sample and I never put it back in the bottling bucket. I'm with Jack; I sample some of it right away, but I'll chill it for an hour and then finish it. But that's more than enough beer to float my hydrometer for the FG reading.

Well, so much for being brief.

 

No, my trub is not 'hardened'. I do not cold crash my beers.

Cheers!

 

Below is a video which conceptually illustrates what I do; it is not exactly the way I do it but the concept is the same.

Cheers!