Bottling procedure

So i've done several batches now and I think my bottling procedure could use some serious help so i'm looking to find out what other people are doing.

I basically sanitize and fill as I go along. I have a 5 gallon bucket of starsan, I fill about 12 bottles then let them sit for a few, then dump out the start san. Then I fill those 12 bottles with beer, cap them, then repeat.

It's a little messy and there isn't much rhythm.

What part of your procedure needs help? Is it resulting in bad beer or just a sloppy mess you hate cleaning up?

Everybody has their own lil way of doing this. Mine is dictated by limited kitchen size.

I collect my bottles the night before, or the morning of and run them through the santize cycle of the dishwasher to get rid of any oxyclean film or previous sticky mess on the sides. This can take a long time, so go help the wife with chores to help offset the mess you're about to make in her kitchen. lol



Grab a FG reading, heat my priming sugar then then rack the brew off to a bucket so it can be settling a lil bit while I get a few other things together.



Hook up my jet on one side of the sink and put some starsan in the other sink well. and run through my bottles then stand them upside down in the rack.



Put some towels down, and set my bottling station up and proceed to knock them on out. I put the caps in some starsan and loosely lay them on top of the bottle till I get 25 ready - which in my case is one of those old dish racks. The process goes by pretty quick.

I work from left to right. Grab the bottle and fill, while it's filling I grab a cap, soon as it's done, I place the loose cap on to prevent contamination, set the bottle in the rack and repeat the process. When I get about half way, I cap them and do the other half.

Wipe the tops clean, label and off they go to the beer closet.



On my first out of the box batch, I used the racking cane and hose that came with my kit one time before I wanted to toss it all in the garbage. There has to be a better way I thought.

After some reading here on HBT, I learned it was much easier to hook up the filling hose to the spigot and bring the bottle up to the filling tube. It's a very clean process with very little overfill - if any at all.



The only other thing I can suggest is to put some acoustic blues on the tune box, grab a bottle from the closet and enjoy!

Happy Brewing!

I'm not sure what part needs help, just trying to find out what other people are doing. I like the idea of using the racks to sanitize everything and then move on to bottling.

When I bottle, I transfer to the bottling bucket, add appropriate primer and let that permeate the wort while I sanitize all my bottles and let them drip from the bottle tree. I then give another stir and attach a bottle filler with small section of tubing to the spigot and with a small table in front of me start the bottling process. I am usually able to bottle the first beer and then cap while the second bottle (all 12 oz) fills. If I am doing 16 oz flip tops, its even easier. usually not have any spillovers unless there is a problem with the capping process. After a while you process should get smoother.

Sheldon