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Some starting points for beginners:
Quick and diry guide to fermenting fruit - cider and wine
Came out not bad. But the starting temperature was a little high and it has a slight tangy flavour.
I'm trying to find a way to better control the fermentation temperature on the cheap. Any tips appreciated!
One question I do have... After leaving in the bottles for a couple of weeks I've noticed a white residue is settling on the bottom of the bottle. Is this normal? (Pic of sediment in comments)
For super cheap pseudo temp control, you could build a swamp cooler, basically put your carboy into a tub of water with a t-shirt or some cloth around it to soak water up around the entire thing and then blow a fan on it to create evaporative cooling.
Another option would be to use kveik yeast and then you don't really need to worry about ferment temp (other than maybe being too cold).
Great tips thank you!
Congrats! It looks great.
Fair warning about aging in plastic, it might take on some weird flavors ;)
As for the stuff in the bottom, if it’s a white, kinda powdery-floats-into-solution-kind of deal, like silt in water, it’s dead yeast as fermentation continues in the bottle.
As for temp, if you want to get technical fermentation controllers can be fairly inexpensive but the cheapest way is probably find a cooler area of your house then wrap the carboy in blankets / add a seed starter mat to the area to add minor heating nudges until it’s where you want it consistently.
That yeast isn't dead, it's just gone dormant as there's no food (sugar) left in the bottle for it to eat. You could easily build up more yeast from the stuff in the bottom of one of these bottles.
Well yeah ok you could, but for all intents and purposes it’s dead/residual/left over/sediment yeast.
If you’ve were going to harvest yeast better to do it after primary eh.
There are certainly better places to harvest yeast but that doesn't have anything to do with whether or not the yeast in the bottom of a naturally carbonated bottle of beer is alive or dead. It's not dead, just dormant.
P.s. just attached the sediment pic in a comment. Image upload is acting flakey today.
Thanks.
I have glass bottles but was sick when it was bottling time and it was just easier to use the plastic ones. They're basically my emergency bottles.
As for the temp, it seems that with this kit it needs to be on the cooler side (18-21c). The room I was doing it in is fairly cool but not that cool and it creeped up to 23c for probably about 10 of the initial 24 hours unfortunately. When I noticed I got the wet towels out which helped a lot.
After that it says to keep is between 15-21 on the online instructions, and 14-18 on the physical ones. I avged about 16c throughout the brew phase so got that okay.
With the warmer weather coming, I'm concerned I won't be able to keep this cool enough without some extra stuff (was thinking an old freezer unit for insulation, and some kind of wet blanket or ice pack rotation).
Nice! Haha I get it, I’ve gone right into growlers before when I wasn’t feeling well just to get it done. Only had one blow once lol.
If you’ve got “buy and old freezer” money for this that’s absolutely the best plan. Get that, or just an old form fridge or whatever, as long as it works, and something like this: https://a.co/d/244s4zY
I have the same one, it’s worked reliably for years.
Very nice looking brew! Congratulations and welcome to the slippery slope XD
For a cheap cooling method, you can buy a wine cooler used for like $100 that lets you set specific temps. Take the racks out and then you’re set.
Thanks for the tip. Our ideas of cheap are different though haha
Sediment pic (the bottle had been on its side):
It’s still a bit hard to see but yeah, I think this is probably just yeast floating down.