Paul Sluman
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- Joined
- Jan 13, 2020
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Okay, be gentle with me..! I am a bit of a newbie: this is only my fourth kit...
My brother bought me a Festival Belgian Dubbel beer kit for Christmas, which looks lovely. However, I got a bit confused by the instructions as I thought it instructed some weird two-stage fermentation process before bottling, which I'd never encountered before. So I duly 'barrelled' it back into my BV (siphoned out via a big bucket, cleaned out the BV, sterilised it and filter siphoned it back in), added the priming sugar - and now realise that the instructions were to either barrel/keg it OR bottle it. Besides which, the BV is obviously no good for barrelling as it has an airlock, so won't carbonate very effectively. It is bubbling merrily away though.
If I were to have bottled it, I should have waited another 5 days or so, according to the instruction leaflet. The gravity reading seemed to be around the 1.025 mark. The target was 1.006 for bottling (from a 1.060 start) before adding the priming sugar to avoid my bottles exploding.
So, my question is: what is the best bet for salvaging my stupid cockup? Should I wait a week or so until the first sugars would have been used up and just bottle it then, relying on the priming sugars, or leave it longer, maybe adding a quarter tsp of sugar to each bottle at that later point? I can live with it being a bit stronger...
All part of the learning experience, I guess - but any tips on saving my brew would be gratefully accepted. I hope the above makes sense!
My brother bought me a Festival Belgian Dubbel beer kit for Christmas, which looks lovely. However, I got a bit confused by the instructions as I thought it instructed some weird two-stage fermentation process before bottling, which I'd never encountered before. So I duly 'barrelled' it back into my BV (siphoned out via a big bucket, cleaned out the BV, sterilised it and filter siphoned it back in), added the priming sugar - and now realise that the instructions were to either barrel/keg it OR bottle it. Besides which, the BV is obviously no good for barrelling as it has an airlock, so won't carbonate very effectively. It is bubbling merrily away though.
If I were to have bottled it, I should have waited another 5 days or so, according to the instruction leaflet. The gravity reading seemed to be around the 1.025 mark. The target was 1.006 for bottling (from a 1.060 start) before adding the priming sugar to avoid my bottles exploding.
So, my question is: what is the best bet for salvaging my stupid cockup? Should I wait a week or so until the first sugars would have been used up and just bottle it then, relying on the priming sugars, or leave it longer, maybe adding a quarter tsp of sugar to each bottle at that later point? I can live with it being a bit stronger...
All part of the learning experience, I guess - but any tips on saving my brew would be gratefully accepted. I hope the above makes sense!