Bottled today & yesterday

Conmaicne Mara

Batch one was of 17.5 litres Vitafit, left in the fermentation bucket for about 5 weeks. Primed with sugar, sweetened with Splenda. Bottled using existing swing top bottles, but with new seals I bought during the week.

Batch two was 20 litres of Vitafit again, same fermentation duration. Primed with two litres of apple juice - forgot to add tea, will do next batch - and sweetened again with Splenda. Bottled using 59 300ml Bulmers longnecks, and the remaining swing tops.

Just got to wait three months now.....

Is it done yet?



Got more apple juice at hand, but I've run out of time until the weekend. Everything is rinsed out but not properly cleaned yet.

Still got those Heineken bottles to use, but I want to run them through the dishwasher and uber clean them afterwards. They seem to stick the labels on with some type of kriptonite glue...

Conmaicne Mara

40 odd more litres fermenting again... (made time!)

Losty Dublin

Very rare I venture in here but what do you as regards obtaining bottles?

Conmaicne Mara

You can buy bottles from home brew companies like homebrewwest.ie

Or you could ask friends and family to keep them if they drink them.

Or you could chance your arm and ask local pubs.

The ones photo above there came from 20 bottle box packs of Bulmers that I bought in a supermarket I won't name (cos I don't really like them!).

irish_goat

Losty Dublin wrote: »

Very rare I venture in here but what do you as regards obtaining bottles?

Pint bottles have deposits on them but otherwise pubs have to pay for their bottles to be taken away for recycling and thus, you save them money by taking them off their hands. Craft beer pubs in particular will go through a lot of 500ml bottles and should be grand to fill a box or two of empties for you. If you're stuck you can PM and I can get you some in the city centre pub I work in.

It's good to get into the habit of rinsing bottles you drink at home straight away and saving them too.

howamidifferent

Any particular reason you left it for 5 weeks in the fermenter? I thought two weeks was more than enough from what I'd read here...Would the additional time improve the drink? I ask because I have 28L on for a week at the minute and had expected to bottle after week 2 but could leave longer if it was of benefit....:p

BeerNut

howamidifferent wrote: »

I thought two weeks was more than enough from what I'd read here

:eek: Go back and read it again. Most people will say two weeks is the minimum.

howamidifferent wrote: »

Would the additional time improve the drink?

The main thing is that fermentation has finished, and it's worth leaving it a bit longer than that to let the yeast clean up after itself. There's no harm in leaving it an extra week or two after fermentation has finished, but I doubt there's a huge benefit either.

Conmaicne Mara

I was told before to leave it four weeks, so that's what I had planned. Just happened I couldn't get the time to go bottling for an additional week so that's where the five weeks came from.

Tae bags, a generous (hic) handfull of badly chopped raisins, and a dash of H2o, boiled to within an inch of their lives. Doesn't it look appetising, lol.

howamidifferent

BeerNut wrote: »

:eek: Go back and read it again. Most people will say two weeks is the minimum.


The main thing is that fermentation has finished, and it's worth leaving it a bit longer than that to let the yeast clean up after itself. There's no harm in leaving it an extra week or two after fermentation has finished, but I doubt there's a huge benefit either.

Well I suppose it will now give me 3 weeks to let the malic acid do its thing.

Losty Dublin

Conmaicne Mara wrote: »

You can buy bottles from home brew companies like homebrewwest.ie

Or you could ask friends and family to keep them if they drink them.

Or you could chance your arm and ask local pubs.

The ones photo above there came from 20 bottle box packs of Bulmers that I bought in a supermarket I won't name (cos I don't really like them!).

The only reason I ask is because I'm in the habit of leaving bottles for ever before I recycle them and as a result I've tons of the bastards. I'd make fortunes off rioters and Nordies for petrol bombs

If anybody here can find use for my empties then I'd gladly put some aside for people as need be. I'd guess they would need a certain amount of cleaning and no, I won't leave worms in them

Conmaicne Mara

Good offer Losty, it's a pity you're on the opposite side of the country to me. Someone will make use of them I'm sure

Conmaicne Mara

With chopped, boiled raisins (muslin bag to keep things mess free), cider yeast, and Tea.



Just the juice (and cider yeast naturally).

Khannie

Where did you get that muslin bag? Must pick myself up one.

Conmaicne Mara

Khannie wrote: »

Where did you get that muslin bag? Must pick myself up one.

Got mine on Ebay, but they're on homebrewwest.ie as well I'm hoping they'll contain all the raisin mess for me.

Tube

Would you post a link if you have it?

I bought one in the HBS and it fell apart after one use.

Conmaicne Mara

Now that I look at my Ebay link I suspect it's one or other of the HBW shops selling it.

Put this into Ebay search bar: 180821641810

Tube

Conmaicne Mara wrote: »

Now that I look at my Ebay link I suspect it's one or other of the HBW shops selling it.

Put this into Ebay search bar: 180821641810

Homebrew.ie!

redser7

You can pick up muslin cheap in Hickeys or any drapery store and just gather your bits up in it and tie it off at the top.

Conmaicne Mara

Nuts, I hope mine doesn't fall apart in the brew now. I think I'll buy myself a strainer just to have handy on bottling day, can throw it into the sterilising solution in the bottling bucket.

lang

redser7 wrote: »

You can pick up muslin cheap in Hickeys or any drapery store and just gather your bits up in it and tie it off at the top.

That's exactly what I've done. Although sometimes I do find it a bit annoying... there is nothing more annoying than cutting the fabric too small for what you are wanting it for. But much better than having to go and buy the Muslin bags... maybe when (if) I progress to extract/All-grain then I may invest in some large Muslin bags for the grains, but for now I'm good with what I have.

Conmaicne Mara

Feels like I've this bottled for a month already :eek:

howamidifferent

I bottled 26 litres last night into 2 litre bottles. Batch primed in 2nd vessel with Vitafit apple juice and sweetened with the Lidl sweetener. Looks tempting already

Only downside was I had to leave about 4 litres in the original bucket as at that point the raisins began blocking the outlet tap. Must put them in a bag next time.:(