I am preparing to make a NB chocolate milk stout this weekend and I’m gonna try something interesting. Maybe somebody has already tried this simple method that just came to my mind. Every time I ferment, when it’s time to either bottle or keg we all have to transfer from the primary. I am always challenged by the process of getting all the beer out without picking up crud from the yeast cake. So I am going to use gravity to my benefit this time. When it set the fermenter down for the 3 weeks of fermentation I am going to place a wedge under one side of the bucket. Hopefully this will cause the yeast cake to settle to the low side of the bucket leaving the high side clean and ready to be siphoned with no chance for sediment being sucked up . And since the yeast cake tends to be somewhat stubborn and set in place I think that when I get to the end of the transfer I can level the bucket out and the sediment layer will stay in place for the short time that it takes to complete the transfer. What do y’all think? Sound like it’s a possible good plan? Any thoughts?
I do this all the time when i siphon to the bucket. I put a wedge under it about an hour before I bottle. Makes it easier to stick the siphon down without worrying about sticking it in the yeast cake.
One caution though…5 gallons of liquid tilting to one side could be a recipe for disaster if you aren’t careful.
I agree it could spell disaster. Yes, I also do that when siphoning from my kettle to the bucket. But I did nit think it would be effective to do that a few hours before siphoning from the fermenter since the yeast cake is usually rather tenacious and does not move well. So I am going to try it now allowing it to be on angle through the entire fermentation period.
What I do is leave the bucket flat when fermenting and also when starting the siphon. Keep the siphon just above the trub, I watch my hose and when it gets a little cloudy pull it up a bit. As the beer gets lower I start the tilt very slowly and the cake won’t move. I get out almost all the clear beer. It’s a lot easier than tilting a full bucket which I found to be a pain.
^^^^^ This.^^^^^
+1 to brewcat… This is my SOP to the letter. Seems to work pretty well for me so far. However, the idea of tilting the fermenter during fermentation intrigues me. I could see that working very well too. If someone tries this method, please let us know how it turns out…Or maybe I’ll just tilt the bucket on the batch I’m brewing this weekend. Gotta love learning here on this forum.
Namaste!!!
If you tilt the bucket and put a spigot in you could bottom harvest some yeast. Maybe it could be a poor mans conical.
Well, I am going to try it this weekend for my milk chocolate stout. I will report in 4 weeks as to how the method works
