Need bottling Advice Please!!

[Darren Andrews (Daza)]

Hey guys I'm bottling on Saturday morning and I cold crashed it and now trying to bring it back to temp of 18C but seems stuck at 14.4C, so that might be it? I was looking thru an old thread here and found this.....

I personally found bulk priming the best way of starting when I first brewed, simply because It allowed me to siphon my beer off the layer sediment and dry hops. Nothing worse than having bottles half full of sediment.

After that, just boil up some dextrose or regular table sugar (i have found dextrose to be best) in a sanitised jug with about 2 cups of water. I just santise my jug, boil water in the kettle, then put it in the microwave for 2 minutes, then shove it in my sink with water just to cool it off a bit. 

After that you would just pour your priming sugar solution into the bottom of a sanitised bucket or fermenter with a tap, then use and auto siphon that you can buy for pretty cheap at a homebrew store to siphon the beer into the sugar solution. The main thing here is to keep the bottom of siphon out of the yeast/trub on the bottom of the fermenter, and to avoid aerating the beer too much by splashing it or letting it run down the walls of your bucket

 I am now thinking maybe bulk prime will be the way to go I think I'll have around 40 odd 500ml bottles and could be at this temp how do I go about this method please? would you recommend it for my first attempt? and I have an auto syphon too. 

Cheers

Darren.

[Matthew Vincent]

Why are you increasing the temp after cold crashing?
Just bottle it at 1 or 2'C (whatever you're cold crash temp is). After bottling store the bottles at ~20'C for 5 - 7 days.

[Darren Andrews (Daza)]

If you go to the last 2 or 3 pages of a thread called questions to stuff I don't understand you'll see. Cheers mate.

[Matthew Vincent]

I use to disolve about 150g of dextrose in a small pot of boiling water (2 cups sounds right), let it gently boil for a few minutes, cool it and then add it to your bottling bucket.

[Darren Andrews (Daza)]

Some of the guys here said you need to make a sugar compensation for the temp if real cold, and as its my first time would find it easier to use the norm recommended measure, I was wondering though should I batch prime or just individually?

[Che Soffe]

I bottled my first batch on Thursday and did a batch prime. Was easy and would definitely recommend.

[Darren Andrews (Daza)]

My only concern doing that before transferring the beer over to the dextrose solution is knowing the amount you'll need cause I'm not transferring it all over stopping above the trub, so it would be a guess? Did you do it by transferring you beer from one fermenter to another? I could use bottle tube then on the tap then so beer would shut off

[Sam DT]

Either ways is fine - brewers friend have a good calculator for you to work out how much dex you need if you bulk prime. If you do bulk prime make sure you sanitize the bucket extra well and then stir well. If you're set up to do it and have it sorted in your head maybe just stick with that.

Don't worry about 14 degrees vs 20 that's close enough - the variation between the two is quite low - it's when you get into the singles that you see a lot of variation.

[Che Soffe]

I just looked at the level the grub was at in my primary and subtracted that from the total.

[Darren Andrews (Daza)]

Sweet just going out to shed to see what's the temp now and sych myself up haha. If I transfer beer in to a clean sanitised fermenter with tap I will try to avoid aerating as much as possible. Cheers mate.

[Craig Howard]

Hey Daza

You have to remember that the heat pad is subtle and designed to maintain temps in a range.  

Its not like a heat element on your stove for example.   So big range shifts in 20+ litres of fluid take time to have effect.  

Where do you measure the temp and how influenced is the sensor from  the ambient?

Good luck with today.  

Get organised, set up with all laid out first is my tip to you.  "mise en place"

Its interesting how different you are approaching your  brew and bottling to my "processes".  

FWIW - my bottling yesterday took me 1.25 hours and I had sanitised bottles the day before ( 3/4 hour)!

I started a new brew same day ( 1 hour) Its very time consuming this beer making lark.

[Darren Andrews (Daza)]

I just finished sanitising my bottles took an hour? All set up just waiting on my dextrose to cool. Going to take a hydrometer reading now I've taken pics too. I am super organised mate. Cheers

[Che Soffe]

Look forward to hearing how it all goes/ turns out.