I am approaching the time when I need to bottle my first brew. It is a Nut Brown Ale. I only have the primary fermenter. Plus a primary fermenter that I use for making wine. Would there be a risk of cross contaminating If I were to rack into my wine primary from my beer primary and then clean and sanitize the beer primary and rack it back to the beer primary and bottle from there.
I am not sure if I will cross contaminate or not. Any one done this before?
James S
Personally, I would go buy a bottling bucket with a spigot for $8-$12. Safer, easier, way less work - plus, frees up your fermenters.
I cannot say for sure - but I would be leery of mixing wine and beer.
How are you going to get the beer into the bottles from the fermenter?
I will probably go ahead and get another bucket. I was going to bottle by starting a syphon from the fermenter and use a bottling tube.
James S
If you’re going to siphon the beer into the bottles, you can skip the double transfer and just add the dry sugar to each bottle, then fill with beer.
I’ll second the “get a bottling bucket” suggestion.
As a side note, fill 1 soda bottle with the beer. Squeeze the air out and cap it. The bottle will expand as CO2 is formed. Thus you know how the batch is progressing.
+1 on priming each bottle, I have done that for years, and while it takes a little more time, I know precisely how much charge is going into each bottle. If you don’t get your beer and priming sugar mixed (without adding O2) well, some will be over-carbonated and some will be under.
+1 on filling one plastic soda pop bottle, I do that for almost every batch as a control.
