Wine and Beer Making.

Hi Guys,

Are there any beer brewers among you? I of course make make wine and have benefited from very good advice from members of this forum. I'm now making my own beer and wonder if beer can be racked to, say, a carboy and left for a few weeks without spoiling.

I barrel my beer - I don't bottle, but the basic procedure on the kit beers that I make is to ferment out in a pail, rack off leaving sediment behind- then transfer to a barrel. However, there will always be sediment left at the bottom of the barrel, and of course, the beer has been sitting on it. I wanted to rack a few times to a carboy so my end product is sediment free before barrelling. Any thoughts please.

I make beer - but not nearly as much as I make wine and mead. A barrel suggests to me the possibility of oxidation and I don't know how impervious a low alcohol beer may be to oxidation. I would think that imperials and Scottish ales might deal with barrel storage better than session ales and beers.. But that said, I would think that beer is always going to have sediment unless you are filtering the brew before you bottle or otherwise "package". My fruit wines drop sediment for months and months but beer made with an ABV of 5-7% is going to be ready for conditioning and bottling after - what ? 3 or 4 weeks? Unless you are designing beers to be aged for months and months then hop flavors and aromas are going to deteriorate... Moreover, bottled beers made by home brewers (not kegged) always have sediment, don't they? So, I guess my response is not very helpful: I think that you may be looking for a solution to something that homebrewers don't typically view as a problem but as part of the very quality of their work...

Thanks, Bernard - much appreciated!

David...when you barrel beer, do you mean you put it in a keg or a real wooden barrel? You are across a whole ocean where a bonnet is not a hat but the hood of a car!

My barrels are actually kegs! I stay in the primary for about three weeks with no secondary and then when it's CLEAR, I rack into the keg....I don't mind losing a little beer to the sediment. Some folks do rack into a secondary successfully....I just try to limit the beers exposure to air and infection as much as possible. Once in the keg, it's charged with CO2 and safe again.

No beer here but I make wine (and pretty good stuff to hear my friends talk about it)

dralarms said:

No beer here but I make wine (and pretty good stuff to hear my friends talk about it)

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Ah, patting myself on the back. Gotta love it, course I do the same thing. Arne.

I make both. Mostly wine but I do boil up 5 gallons of brew now and then. It's cheap, tastes great, and is nice to have around in summer. Beer brewers are equipment junkies even more than wine folks, so I try to avoid that part.