Eliminate sediment?

Brewing processes and methods. How to brew using extract, partial or all-grain. Tips and tricks.

Moderator: slothrob

Post Reply
HairNutz
Posts: 5
Joined: Fri Sep 17, 2004 10:36 pm

Eliminate sediment?

Post by HairNutz »

Is it possible to totally eliminate sediment in the bottle?

I have only brewed a few batches - all using 1 stage fermentation. I have recently purchased a 2nd glass carboy in the hopes of reducing or eliminating the sediment that I got from the first few batches. Will this 2nd stage eliminate or greatly reduce the sediment that Im getting?

I know that its not harmful but its hard to convince friends that they should drink a beer that I made with a bunch of gunk at the bottom :)

I have even read about 3rd stage - will that help further reduce sediment?
User avatar
Push Eject
Double IPA
Double IPA
Posts: 233
Joined: Wed Mar 21, 2001 1:01 pm
Location: Lancaster, CA, US
Contact:

Re: Eliminate sediment?

Post by Push Eject »

HairNutz wrote:Is it possible to totally eliminate sediment in the bottle?
The sediment you are referring to is mostly from bottle conditioning your beer - that is, the last stage of fermentation that adds carbonation to your finished beer.

The only way to get rid of that is to force-carbonate your beer in a keg, filter it and fill bottles with already carbonated beer.

Not hard to do, but takes a bit more equipment than bottle conditioned beer.

See threads on this forum for force-carbonating and filtering your beer or on www.howtobrew.com.

Cheers!
Charlie
Brewer2001
Double IPA
Double IPA
Posts: 170
Joined: Fri Sep 07, 2001 1:56 am

Some helpfull hints.

Post by Brewer2001 »

Hair,

You can minimise the sediment (trub and yeast) from the beer by re-racking it off the sediment cake. The trick is to clear the beer by cooling it down as low as you can get it. I live in Seattle (not cold in the winter but cool) so I brew during the Fall, Winter and Spring. Cooling the beer drops the sediment out of solution. I now use a 10 gallon Corni keg to ferment and rack to a 5 gallon for maturation. I used to perform this in a carboy covered with black plastic.

Charlie is right. If you bottle condition you will always have some sediment.
The best that you can do is use a yeast that has good compaction characteristics, cool and mature (cellar) the beer for a period of time.

I hope this helps.

Good brewing,

Tom F.
nhyde
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Oct 07, 2004 4:26 am

Rack to a secondary and use corn sugar

Post by nhyde »

Hi.
I'm relatively new to the brewing game but I've reduced the sediment to a degree by racking to a secondary fermenter and using corn sugar (as opposed to dme) as bottling sugar.

Hope this helps you. And heck, I've been successful in pouring the brew for homebrew skecptics (so they don't have to deal with the sediment...) Course, some folks just don't like a good 'brew. ;)

Nathan
Post Reply