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	FORUM ON BEER, HOMEBREWING, AND RELATED ISSUES
		Digest Janitor: pbabcock at hbd.org


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Contents:
  Darrell blew it! ("Brian Lundeen")
  Swing top bottles (Glyn and Mary)
  Flat beer follow up (Tom Puskar)


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Date: Tue, 8 Sep 2009 23:13:59 -0500
From: "Brian Lundeen" <blundeen at mts.net>
Subject: Darrell blew it!


> Contents:
>   Re: Flat Beer (Joel Wilson)
>   flat beer ("Darrell G. Leavitt")
>   Re: Flat Beer (Fred L Johnson)
>   Re: Flat Beer (Glyn and Mary)
>   Re: Flat beer (stencil)
>   RE: Flat beer ("Mike Patient")
>   RE: Flat Beer (Josh Knarr)
>   RE: Flat Beer ("RJ")

Damn! For the first time in HBD history, we could have had an entire
contents menu of 8 identical responses, and Darrell "Gee I Have to be
Different" Leavitt has to go and muck with the default subject line. Way to
go, Darrell. Go sit in a corner and contemplate your bad with a Coors Light.

Aaaagh!!!

Bwian



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Date: Wed, 9 Sep 2009 05:30:09 -0700 (PDT)
From: Glyn and Mary <graininfuser at yahoo.com>
Subject: Swing top bottles

I bottled in swing top for 10+ years. The gaskets do
go bad. Whenever I opened a beer that was flatter 
than average, I pulled the gasket off. Next time I 
bottled I put on a new gasket. It was generally only
one or two per 10 gallon batch.

If you are going to bottle swing tops are the 
best IMO. Visit a local German restaurant and 
ask for their empties!

Glyn
So. Middle TN



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Date: Wed, 09 Sep 2009 20:02:06 -0400
From: Tom Puskar <tpuskar at optonline.net>
Subject: Flat beer follow up

Thanks to everyone who responded to my previous post.  Here's a summary of 
some of the questions that were posed and what I believe to be my problem.

1.  The Dubbel was fermented at basement temps here in NJ.  The temp was 
about close to 80F during the primary.  I tried the wet t-shirt trick to 
cool it down but it didn't drop too much below 76F
2.  The heat wave subsided a bit and the secondary was closer to 75F during 
the approximately two weeks.
3.  The temp following bottling is low 70's--probably around 72-74F
4.  As someone noted, I may have waited too long before racking to the 
secondary.  There wasn't much activity in the airlock when I racked.  I was 
planning to rack earlier but that darn job thing sent me on a trip for a few 
days.
5.  The beer settled to nearly crystal clear in the secondary--again it sat 
a few days longer than I had planned.  I'm gonna hafta do something about 
this job thing.  Its cramping my brewing style!
6.  I purposely tried not to scoop up too much sediment from the secondary 
when I racked to the bottling bucket and herein lies my problem--I think.
7.  I boiled my caps for about 10 minutes but I've always done that and 
unless some manufacturer changed the liner formulation I don't think that's 
the problem.
8.  I think I have enough corn sugar in the beer, its the yeast I'm 
concerned about.
9.  I tried rousting the yeast (there does seem to be some sediment in the 
bottles) by inverting each bottle a few times.  I'll do it again in a day or 
so then check if I got better carbonation.

Bottom line is, aside from possibly being impatient, I think my yeast pooped 
out.  I probably was too zealous in trying to get a clear beer and racked to 
the secondary too late and didn't scoop enough yeast from the secondary into 
he bottling bucket.

The alcohol content (went from 1.07 to 1.01 may be contributing to making 
the yeast a bit sluggish.  When I used to make Trippels and while back, I 
used to wash the sediment from the primary and add it back when bottling. 
This probably would have worked here too.

I'll wait a few days and test both a Grolsch bottle and a regular long neck 
and see if the rousing did any good.  That's the part I like best--the 
testing!

I'm toying with opening each bottle and adding some new yeast but I'm 
concerned about potential contamination and will only do that if the rousing 
and time don't work.

Thanks again to all who responded.

I'll report on any results in a week or two.

Tom in Howell, NJ 




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