How many carbonation drops?

howamidifferent

First brew in the fermenting bucket since Dec 23rd. Yeah!
It's the Cooper Canadian Blonde starter kit from homebrewwest.ie
Planning on bottling it into 500ml PET bottles on Saturday Jan 5th.

The carbonation drops say 1 for a 330ml bottle or 2 for a 750ml bottle.
Should I half them to add 1 1/2 drops to each 500ml bottle or should I just use 1 drop per bottle? Or will 2 cause the bottle to explode. Seems a bit odd that their not sized for the standard 500ml or pint bottle to be honest. Dont want to muck this up so any advise appreciated. I'm in so much anticipation I'll be devastated if I ruin this first attempt.

Cheers

EDIT: Another afterthought question. Since I'll have taken at least two samples from the tap on the fermenting bucket to use with the hydrometer, how should I best clean this before bottling, since I can see some dark gunk from the first sample taken left as a drip on the end of the tap? Clean the tap with water only or do I need to sanitize the tap before I bottle from it?

Shiny

I just use one drop in a 500ml bottle and its fine. I have used one and a half drops before in a brew and over-carbed a bit. Nothing exploded but the bottles were bulging slightly.

In terms of sanitising the tap, the gunk that came out was probably yeast as it tends to go into the tap during fermentation. I normally spray sanitiser up into the tap from a spray bottle. If you don't have a spray bottle use some other means of squirting the sanitiser up into the tap and leave it soak. I wouldn't even bother rinsing it out after that as when you have inserted the 'little bottler' tube up into it there wont be much of the outer part of the tap exposed to the beer.

Mister Burns

Did the Canadian Blonde a few months back and used 1 ½ drops per bottle and the carbonation was spot on.

To be honest it didn’t turn out to be a great beer but I’d been warned that it wasn’t going to be amazing and it was still drinkable. I’ve since done a couple of IPA’s which turned out very well – seems from the sage words of other commenters on here that for kit brewing the darker the better in terms of types of kits to use

howamidifferent

Can you link to or recommend one of the IPA's you think were good please?
Total newb so recommendations are good.
Also, I used the 1KG brewing sugar with the canadian blonde as that was what came in the kit. Would doing the same beer with the dry malt extract make much of a difference to a "non-premium" beer versus the brewing sugar? Or is it all in the brewkit that determines beer quality?

Richie71

I made this kit last year and found it difficult to halve the carbonation drops so just used 2 per 500ml bottle. It took a little longer than usual before it was ready to drink (9 weeks rather than the usual 6 from start to finish). All turned out fine and no bottle bombs

tteknulp

Coopers apa is nice ,or brewmaker ipa is also good ,i usually dry hop in secondary with cascade or chinook hops in muslin bag

Mister Burns

Coopers IPA was very nice and also done a Make Your Own Beer IPA that the guys in homebrewwest recommended last time I was in there which I dry hopped with Cascade

howamidifferent

Just found this on the homebrewwest site so thought I'd share for information:

"When using Coopers Carbonation drops with 500 ml bottles, Coopers advise using just one drop per bottle; this results in CO2 levels equivalent to commercial beers. When bottling with OxBar bottles, we sometimes put one drop in 20 bottles, and 2 drops in the other 20 bottles. Do not try this with glass bottles though, as the pressure may be higher than normal.

A key consideration is to ensure that the bottles are kept in a warm place (20 to 25 oC) for about 10 days in order to allow secondary fermentation to take place. If bottles are stored at lower temperature, it takes much longer for the beer to become carbonated."

howamidifferent

Just an update on this.
After 8 days I chilled and opened one last night to taste test. As a beer it tasted ok, very much an in-offensive yellow pack variety, nothing great but not bad either. Acceptable for a first attempt I thought.

But the carbonation was very bad.
I know its not been long but I would say it was only about 30% of the carbonation I would expect in a normal beer. It wasn't fully flat, there were lots of bubbles on the inside of the poured glass, but the liquid itself didn't taste very carbonated. Not flat but definetly no where near acceptable for normal drinking.

Bottles are in a warm room, same room they fermented in, 20 degrees plus at all times, in a box and covered with a blanket to keep warm and dark.
Will this improve over time or at this point is this what the remainder will be like? Just wondering could I open each bottle and add another carbonation drop or if that would cause the beer to go off? Any advise from the pro's appreciated.

Just to confirm, I only put one in when bottling.

8 days seems a bit short. I leave mine at least two weeks after bottling before I open any.

howamidifferent

Sorry guys since no one has answered my question I'm going to ask it again.

Just wondering could I open each bottle and add another carbonation drop or if that would cause the beer to go off? Any advise from the pro's appreciated.

BeerNut

You could; it wouldn't cause the beer to go off; but I don't see why you would.

As nialler24 said, you opened the bottle too early. Give it another week at least before opening the next one.

howamidifferent

Ok Cheers thanks.
Just good to know that if undercarbonated it can be rectified later.

lang

Hey,

Just to agree with some of the other posters. Think I've done about 5/6 successful kit brews at this stage and have always but one carb drop into the 500ml Oxbar bottles. Generally it takes about 3 weeks before they are near ready to drink (but I find myself 'sampling' around week 2 of conditioning), but the storage area is generally around 13C or so. I have found the longer I leave them the better the beer tastes and the better the carbonation. It is the worst part of the beer making process... when in bottles but just not drinkable... patience is a virtue.

howamidifferent

Update: I chilled and drank two more last night, again , carbonation was bad, but beer was definetly drinkable. Tastewise its fine but just a little flat. I'll give it another week and see how it goes. Dont think I detected any difference in the carbonation but it did seem to taste better.

lang

howamidifferent wrote: »

I'll give it another week and see how it goes.

Up to yourself, but I'd be more inclined to leave it about another 2 weeks (if you can hold out that long :P). You should see more of a difference if you wait that ling (i.e. Week 4 of conditionning). But this is all entirely up to you.

Hellrazer

Hope someone can help with this one.

Bottled on the 10th January.Decided to try a beer tonight.

It tastes quite good but the carbonation is crap.Its fizzy and you can see bubbles rising so it is carbonating.

When I bottled I left it in the place where it was brewed for 5 days and then out into the shed.

With all this colder weather Im just wondering would carbonation take longer in a colder place??

Should I bring them back into the house??

Should I give them a bit of a shake to try stir the yeast back to life?

Really thought almost 4 weeks in the bottles would have been enough.

Tube

At 18-20 degrees I'd expect carbonation to be complete in a week.

Any colder than that and it will take longer. Much colder and it will take much longer. Below 11 degrees the yeast is virtually dormant.

Hellrazer

Tube wrote: »

At 18-20 degrees I'd expect carbonation to be complete in a week.

Any colder than that and it will take longer. Much colder and it will take much longer. Below 11 degrees the yeast is virtually dormant.

Thanks for that Tube.

Any way to restart things so to speak?Or should I just wait it out?

Tube

Get the temp back up to 18 to 22 even and things will go back to normal.

You could bung them in the hotpress for a 4-7 days? I'd even give them a daily shake to make sure the yeast is in suspension and doing its job.

joctcl

1,2,3 rule for Coopers C Blonde
1 week in primary
2 weeks in secondary (Clarity and Flavour, not sitting on trub)
3 weeks in Bottles, 16-18 weeks, use a coopers oxbar bottle or worse case plastic screw cap lucozade bottle, you can tell without cracking it whether its carbed or not by squeezing.
My last CCB kit I did was left in the shed 12 months(I forgot about it!!) lovely drop.