Question about Bottle Conditioning

[meadowstream]

How do you add sugar to your beer prior to bottle conditioning? How do you mix it in thoroughly? Do you add directly to your conical? Do you mix in a 2ndary tank?

Thanks for any and all responses!

[mmussen]

Might be helpful

Where I'm at we don't actually bottle for sale, just for judges and in order to sample beer long after its gone and see how it held up. We add sugar into a corny keg and bottle off of that.
I do know a guy that adds sugar directly to the bottles as well though.

Hope it helps!

[meadowstream]

mmussen, thanks for your response. That is what I do with my pilot set up as well - put boiled and cooled sugar into a corny key, then transfer from fermenter into this keg to accomplish mixing, then pressurize and bottle fill. Would love to know what larger scale bottle conditioners (Belgian ale brewers?) do, too...

[dick murton]

Much bigger scale - 250 hl + at a time. In line dosing system or mixers in tank, inwhich case add sugar syrup first, then add beer, then rouse say overnight before packaging. So you could use the altter method without too much problem if you can get hygienic agitators, or gas rouse in instead, particularly if you in tank carbonate after syrup addition

[MatthewS]

Just curious about adding sugar first?

Obviously you must know exactly what your volume of beer is going to be in the tank. Are you using a flow meter to get the precise amount of beer into the (sugar) tank?

In the past, I have always had the beer in the tank and then moved the sugar into the tank and recirculated. seemed to work on a small scale (10BBL).

[Alex T]

Hi,

We make a bit of bottle conditioned beer (100 and 200HL batches) and there are four ways I know of doing it (first three are basically the same):

1) Dissolve sugar in hot water to sterilise, add to the tank after (or during) filtration and agitate with a sanitary agitator such as a Scandibrew agitator (typically used for yeast propagation).

2) same as above and utilise a hygienic magnetic agitator. I know of one brewery doing this - nice solution - easier than the scandibrew - but expensive.

3) same as above and utilise alfa laval iso-mix technology. also not cheap, but will do the job.

4) dose in line to filler - requires more automation and monitoring than batch methods below and probably the most expensive (but maybe the best).

Critical to ensure that if doing any of the batch methods that you ensure thorough mixing (or both yeast and sugar). Stratification can happen, especially depending on your yeast strain.....

Cheers,

Alex

[banjolawyer]

In the past, I have always had the beer in the tank and then moved the sugar into the tank and recirculated. seemed to work on a small scale (10BBL).

What would be the preferred types of pumps for mixing in sugar and new yeast consistently via recirculation?

[banjolawyer]

It's probably a dumb question, but what i mean to ask is whether recirculating like this with certain pumps would cause too much introduction of oxygen.

[dick murton]

Pumps and the associate pipework shouldn't introduce air - full stop. If they do, the system is not fit for purpose and needs to be replaced

[banjolawyer]

Thanks Dick. Referencing another thread concerning the gpm and psi requirements for a CIP pump, Ted notes that

Also if you use it for beer transfer its the opposite that you want ie.: low psi and high GPM.

Any opinions about what type of specs you'd want in a pump intended to recirculate beer periodically in, for example a 10bbl tank, in order to keep the new yeast and sugar consistently mixed in during a bottling session.

[dick murton]

Fairly small centrifugal, perhaps with a flow of 20 brl / hr, taking off at the side, returning at the inlet - but only whilst not bottling, and run intermittently, not continuously. Once mixed in initially, the yeast should start working slowly and keep in suspension reasonably easily.