Couple questions about my first 5 gallon batch Blonde Ale

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stevenf
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Couple questions about my first 5 gallon batch Blonde Ale

Post by stevenf »

Up to this point I've only done 2 gallon batches in my Mr Beer LBK's and have gotten along fine with those. I haven't done any secondary fermentation with those. Basically just primary for three weeks give a couple days + or _ and cold crash in the fridge for 2 to 3 days before bottling. They've all turned out drinkable with a few really good. This batch I put together a blonde ale recipe (at least that's what I was attempting to do) with some ingredients that I had on hand and a minimal purchase of the hops. I purchased a 6.5 gallon pale and brewed it last saturday March 8th. I used the Brewers Friend recipe calculator. Kinda curious if anyone else has used it as I don't ever see it mentioned. Ingredients were
3.3 lbs Briess Golden Light LME
3 lbs Briess Pilsen DME Late addition
8 oz corn sugar Late addition
10 oz carapils steeped 30 minutes at 152ish
1 oz Willamette 55 min for 18.15 IBU's
1 oz Willamette 10 min for 6.73 IBU's
1 tspn Irish Moss 10 min
Boil was 3 gallons due to my stove top limitations. Hoping the next one will be a full volume boil if the weather permits.
US-05 yeast one packet fermenting at 63 deg.
starting gravity was 1.052. I was off 2 points as the calculator indicated a SG of 1.054

So here's the options I'm considering and can't decide on:
1 Leave in the primary until it finishes, batch prime and bottle. This will be a first for me as well. I've always bottle primed my small batches. No cold crash as the pale will not fit in my fridge.
2 I don't have a 5 gallon carboy but I could transfer to 2 of my LBK's and do a secondary, cold crash for a few days, batch prime transferring both LBK's to the bottling bucket and bottle.
3 Let the beer finish in the primary, transfer to 2 LBK's, cold crash, batch prime and bottle.

At the moment I'm leaning towards option 1 as all the transferring seems to me to lend more opportunities for infection. Too many options
woody
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Re: Couple questions about my first 5 gallon batch Blonde Al

Post by woody »

option 1 is what I do most. I take it you are going to bottle ,if so what I do, is use a bottling bucket and add p sugar to the bottling bucket before transferring out of the primary. this mixes the p sugar vary well. if you do not have b bucket and you bottle from the primary strait into the bottle how do you mix in your priming sugar without disturbing the yeast and trub?
as far as secondary's go, unless your dry hopping or have a big strong beer that needs to sit a while to meld, I would not use one.
I do not know what LBK are but I'm thinking that it is a small fermenter. could you use them as a bottling bucket?
the only time I do cold crashing is when the yeast will not settle out and the beer is vary cloudy. although when I do cold crash my beers have been crystal clear after 2 days.
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Brewbirds
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Re: Couple questions about my first 5 gallon batch Blonde Al

Post by Brewbirds »

I've never bottled directly from a pale so I don't know how that works but if you have an ice chest handy you could get some benefits of cold crashing if you put the pale in it, add some frozen water bottles and wrap good.

When I transfer for cold crashing I like to use the slim lines because ...well ... they have slim lines so that two fit in the fridge better. I think they were $7 at Wal-Mart.
If you transfer from the pale into two of those to cold crash you can bottle from them (a bottling wand fits inside the spigot) and still bottle prime so you are only transferring once.

Using mini sugar cubes to bottle prime makes it a breeze.

:cheers:
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swenocha
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Re: Couple questions about my first 5 gallon batch Blonde Al

Post by swenocha »

IMHO, you don't really need a secondary here, but opinions, of course, vary on this. I tend to do the time in the primary, cold crash that (not always), transfer to a bottling bucket, and bottle. The only time I secondary is if I want to age something. I personally don't think there is much of a quality gain in doing so on a base beer. But, again, MHO and YMMV.
Swenocha is a vast bastard of brewing knowledge - Wings_Fan_In_KC

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stevenf
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Re: Couple questions about my first 5 gallon batch Blonde Al

Post by stevenf »

Thanks for the replies. Seems like the best course would just be to stop worrying about it and let it finish. I might try doing the cold crash in an ice chest idea as I think I have an ice chest big enough for the pale and frozen water bottles. If I wasn't very clear I've only bottled from a primary using the Mr Beer fermenters as they have a spigot installed on the end for that purpose. This batch will be syphoned into a bottling bucket and batch primed. Thanks again
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