Ways to reduce sediment in bottle conditioned beers?

rubadub

I would like only a small amount of yeast in my bottles. I was thinking one way would be to bottle condition them in 3L PET bottles, let them settle down, then chill and slowly decant into my beer bottles leaving the bulk of the sediment in the 3L bottles, then I can add a tiny bit more sugar to these and cap them, just to make sure they do fizz up a bit more.

Any reasons not to do this? or other ideas?

I would have to wait a bit longer if doing this, another idea would be to pour the almost fermented beer into the 3L bottles and cap them. This would have more sediment in them than usual but I can then let them clear and again decant into my other bottles.

I don't want to get a keg or get into filtering and "soda stream" type carbonation, just want to minimize the yeast a bit.

BeerNut

rubadub wrote: »

then I can add a tiny bit more sugar to these and cap them, just to make sure they do fizz up a bit more.

And here's your flaw. The yeast will use that sugar to breed, so you get more sediment.

Maybe there's a way you can use a beer gun or similar to decant from your 3L bottles without losing fizz: basically treat them like kegs.

Bottom line, I think, is that kegging is the way to go with this.

rubadub

BeerNut wrote: »

The yeast will use that sugar to breed, so you get more sediment.

Yes, I realise it will have more seds, but I imagine I should only have to add maybe 1/4 the usual sugar to each bottle as it will already be very fizzy, yet clear, so I should only get 1/4 the seds as usual, but all the fizz.

I would chill my fizzed up 3L bottles well as I believe this will result in less fizz loss when pouring out, and possibly will keep the yeast more compact down the bottom. I am not after crystal clear beer, and do not want to go to too much effort.

One idea (too much hassle for me) would be if I had crystal clear filtered beer I could have a second small PET bottle with sugar and yeast in just put in it. Have the bottles standing side by side. Now if I had a tube connecting the 2 lids the newly fermenting sugar water will force carb the clear beer like a soda stream. This method should work for kegs too, just have to make sure you have a good connection at the caps. It would make more senses to do it with kegs rather than messing about doing it on loads of bottles.

EDIT: heres another idea for a keg with cheap CO2. Get this simple keg with no injector system.
http://www.homebrew.ie/5-gallon-white-barrel-with-basic-pressure-vent-cap.html

this barrel is fitted with a safety vent cap to allow the release of excess pressure created during secondary fermentation.

Now you have fined clear beer and put it in that keg with no conditioning sugar. Now get yourself 1 or 2 500ml coke PET bottles and half fill them with sugar water and new yeast. Now pop these into the actual barrel, they should stay upright and float around on your beer while brewing away, force carbonating your beer but no yeast getting in it. You would have to be careful if moving the keg as the floating bottle could tip over, they could have stainless ball bearings in the bottom to weigh them down, or some other sort of fixing device inside, it could be connected to the cap or something. Since the keg has a vent you can add lots of sugar to the bottles so it should be fine for the remaining brew.

Problem is it would need to be warm enough for the yeast to ferment throughout the drinking timeframe. Might be some other ways to do this.

And this problem

If, however, you draw lots of pints in quick succession, you may need to add additional CO 2 to provide enough pressure to serve the remainder of the barrel but this keg does not come with the injector system

rubadub

There are also "sedex brodies", but pricey.

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/newinventors/txt/s2269977.htm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2PPBmJZFd0

http://sedexbrewing.com//

Donny5

rubadub wrote: »

One idea (too much hassle for me) would be if I had crystal clear filtered beer I could have a second small PET bottle with sugar and yeast in just put in it. Have the bottles standing side by side. Now if I had a tube connecting the 2 lids the newly fermenting sugar water will force carb the clear beer like a soda stream.

This method won't work because the pressure differential between the CO2 in the headspace and the beer won't be great enough to dissolve the CO2. This might (although I very much doubt it) work with vigourous agitation, but that isn't an option for you.

rubadub

Donny5 wrote: »

This method won't work because the pressure differential between the CO2 in the headspace and the beer won't be great enough to dissolve the CO2.

Not sure if you understood me correctly. I am saying get a bottle of fairly fizzy beer, and connect it to a freshly brewing bottle of sugar water and fully seal them. I have yeast that can get sugar water to 18% in a week, so it can give off plenty of CO2.

I have tried this in the past just fizzing up water but the pressure was too much and blew my seals.
__________________
That cheap barrel might be better for me than messing with 3L bottles. I could possibly even brew in the barrel and close the top towards the end, leave it settle and put in my fairly clear beer into bottles with a little more sugar. Or I could do my other idea with the floating bottle and fill bottles.

I do not drink much at home so a keg is not much use to me, but ease of bottling would be nice.

Those sedex devices fit on twists, so cheap lidl 500ml brown glass perlenbachers could be used, these are on offer at 6 for €4.99 from time to time.

Donny5

I understand what you are saying, but it won't work, because without agitation to dissolve the CO2, you will simply not be able to generate enough pressure to carbonate the beer. It doesn't matter how much CO2 you can produce, the pressure differential between the sugar water and the headspace will reduce to zero long before you generate enough pressure on the surface of the beer to cause dissolution of the CO2 into that liquid. The only way you could possibly get the CO2 to dissolve would be to agitate the beer, but I don't think you could do it successfully at such low pressures.

rubadub

Donny5 wrote: »

without agitation to dissolve the CO2, you will simply not be able to generate enough pressure to carbonate the beer.

I never heard of this before but reading up on soda siphons they do all say it should be agitated. I never heard of people having to agitate beer being bottle conditioned and presumed it would be the same with my idea, a static beer giving off gas and pressurising CO2 back into itself. Unless the new bubbles provide enough agitation.

The soda siphon sites do say to chill down the water too which I presumed would help.

I found the patent for the sedex here
http://www.google.com/patents?id=xILwAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4#v=onepage&q&f=false

Also found this guy collecting CO2 in balloons and pumping it back in!
http://www.angelfire.com/cantina/carbonation/PumpSystem.htm

It works out about €111 for 30 sedex devices including the (huge) postage.

Donny5

Bottle conditioned beer is completely different, as the CO2 is released by the yeast as a solution. At first, this CO2 expands to a gas and rises to the headspace in the bottle. Once the pressure differential between the beer and headspace becomes zero, all subsequent CO2 released by the yeast remains in solution in the beer, and thus the beer is carbonated. With your system, all that would happen is the headspace would become pressurised, but without agitation, you will not be able to dissolve the gas into the liquid.

Sodastreams and the like are different in two ways. The first is that they force the CO2 into the liquid, rather than into the headspace. You could replicate this by using a straw and carbonation stone. The second is that they are using liquified CO2 from a tank or cartridge. Liquid CO2 at 20C will offer a vapour pressure of somewhere around 6MPa (about 875 PSI, if you prefer imperial). This means that the pressure can be regulated to the correct carbonation pressure by a valve, and that carbonation pressure is going to be much higher than anything you will be able to produce with yeast and sugar water. You could get around this by collecting CO2 and then pumping it manually into each container, though.

rubadub

Great explanations, thanks a lot for that. Back to the drawing board for me!

I am looking at those patent drawings of the sedex and wondering if I can come up with something similar. I could make some device for the keg easily enough, but knocking out 50+ would be hassle for bottles.

For my keg it could be some vessel connected with an intermediate ball valve on the very bottom of the keg, the keg up on some sort of stand. So I condition the beer in my keg and it does get fizzy, then close my valve on the bottom and take off the vessel of seds. Now I can bottle my beers and my 1/4 dose of sugar idea should still work to at least minimise seds. I may have to bottle over several days if I have no CO2 injections.

My keg would want to be a cone shape at the bottom to better allow seds go in. An upturned office water dispenser would have this shape, but from watching mythbusters I know they do not hold much pressure.

For individual homemade sedex devices I am thinking of some cheap valves, like car tyre valves, or little cheap foodgrade plastic ball valves which would be left open and collect seds in a plugged bit of plastic tubing on the bottom, then close the valve and remove the tube full of seds.