First Brew in the Bottle

[Cody]

Got my first batch in bottles last night. SO excited! It's a SN Pale Ale clone...at least it's supposed to be. I used Safale-05 and saved some of the yeast for later. Pics below:

Filling bottles. The white-out is to hide the pile of junk on the table I pushed out of the way in my excitement.

I got almost exactly a case out of my 2.5 gallon batch.

Yeast slurry with trub.

Mwahaha. The yeast is going to work for me now.

Small sample of the finished product after gravity testing.

[amg800]

hope it's good!

[CrazyP]

Congrats!!

[Drawdy]

So you just scooped the yeast out of the bottom into a bottle and now you can just re-pitch that into your next beer?

[Cody]

Basically, that's the idea. In practice, it's a little more complicated to make sure you have clean, healthy yeast (note that I haven't actually done this before). But from what I understand, it's not that hard. Sanitation and pitching rate are the big concerns. Guys with more experience can correct me if I'm wrong.

[lunitick1976]

Good work man I am not a yeast rencher or anything close, but ya the Sanitaion and the yeast viabilty are the key's nut how does it taste?

[brewinhard]

Congrats on your first finished brew! Now take what you have learned and brew another, better, batch.

You can definitely reuse dry yeast, but do be aware that the packets are not TOTALLY free of bacteria. These packets are fairly cheap compared to liquid yeast and you will get better results by pitching a fresh packet each time. If you are going to use the yeast within a couple days then you should have no problems with the best case scenario being you repitch at bottling time into another batch immediately. Any longer than 1 wk and I would probably get another fresh pack of yeast. Just my 2 cents.

Once again, congrats on the pale ale and enjoy the fruits of your labor. Meanwhile, brew up another batch so you always have some ready to drink!

Cheers -

Brewinhard

[Cody]

Thanks, guys! I ended up not brewing for another four weeks, so I didn't use the yeast. The pale ale was great, nice and clean finish, pretty crisp, but the bitterness faded quickly as the beer aged. Typical?

Since, I've made a chocolate brown, and am almost done fermenting a hefe right now...as you can see. Moved on to Wyeast and White Labs yeast. So far I've been very happy. Having fun, brewing strong, looking through BCS to figure out my next move!