BeerBorg

OK, my twang is gone! Thanks for everyone's help. Now, everything I bottle has sediment in every bottle. I have 2 LBK's and 1 brew demon going. It happens in all 3 with all different refills. I don't siphon but use the tap. Temp stays steady, sanitizing everything twice, fermenting 3 weeks then bottling. I was fermenting in a dark cool closet and then for 3d week moved onto the kitchen counter to make bottling easier. ..................... The latest batch I left in the closet and never touched the fermenter. Within 24 hours of bottling I see the sediment starting. It's been a week now and allthough there is a lot less sediment than when I was moving the fermenter it's still there. Needless to say it's visually very unappealing. I have to be careful pouring to not stir up the bottom of the bottle and of course don't even bother drinking the last few inches. Am I going to have to let it ferment a month to settle? Instructions say anywhere from 7-10 days. I'd hate to see the amount of sediment for that short of a time. Pic of the Bock (2nd pic) is from a fermenter I moved. Pic of the Cerveza was the one that was never disturbed.

You will always have sediment in the bottle if you are bottle priming with sugar. Because the way that works is the yeast actually ferment a bit more in your bottle eating that sugar. Then when they fall asleep for lack of food, they settle to the bottom just like they would in your fermenter.

The best thing is to chill your beer well, which will help compact it to the bottom, and then not try drinking out of the bottle, but simply pour carefully into a glass, leaving a little bit of beer and the sediment behind.

That said it won't hurt you to drink it unless your so immune compromised that yeast is dangerous to your health - it's full of B vitamins and other nutrients. (although it might cause digestive weirdness for someone who drinks a lot of it and isn't used to it though).

To totally avoid it requires filtering and force carbonation.

FWIW, any bottle conditioned commercial beer will also have the same sediment. There are not very many American beers like this, but there are plenty of Belgian and other European beers that are bottle primed / conditioned.

Well, thank you but that is truly disappointing.

beerme wrote:Well, thank you but that is truly disappointing.

There really is nothing wrong with it, but if you can't get past it for some reason then your answer is to do a very long cold crash in your fermenter or a secondary fermenter as cold as you can get it, and then to keg it and force carb it. You will *still* possibly get a little bit of sediment at the bottom of your keg unless you actually filter the beer, because even after all of that there is still possibly yeast in suspension, but mostly it won't bother your pours.

And then if you really want you can bottle the beer from the keg into bottles after it is force carbed with a bottling gun. That's going to get you as close to be able to drink out of the bottle as a commercial filtered beer if that's what you are really looking for.

Once you build up a pipeline and start ignoring those who say that there's no value in cold conditioning, you can start sticking your bottles in the fridge for a couple of weeks. That really corrects the trub in the bottles.

I confess that I was one of those who preached that there was no value to cold conditioning. Until I was out of town for a couple of weeks. What a difference.

I keg now, so it's different. But cond conditioning has value.

bpgreen wrote:Once you build up a pipeline and start ignoring those who say that there's no value in cold conditioning, you can start sticking your bottles in the fridge for a couple of weeks. That really corrects the trub in the bottles.

To be clear it will *still be there*, it just will be more firmly compacted to the bottom and less likely to mix in.

But if you keep tipping the bottle it will eventually still mix in, so it is still best to put it in a glass in a single pour.

mashani wrote:

bpgreen wrote:Once you build up a pipeline and start ignoring those who say that there's no value in cold conditioning, you can start sticking your bottles in the fridge for a couple of weeks. That really corrects the trub in the bottles.

To be clear it will *still be there*, it just will be more firmly compacted to the bottom and less likely to mix in.

But if you keep tipping the bottle it will eventually still mix in, so it is still best to put it in a glass in a single pour.

Oops. Autocorrect messed that up. I meant to type "compacted" not "corrected". Thanks for catching that.

Just pour slowly and leave that last little bit, it is from a secondary fermentation that actually carbonates the beer when bottle conditioning. Only way to truly avoid it is to keg and have one big bottle basically that will have a bit of sediment on the bottom, instead of multiple bottles. It really is unavoidable!