bgough

Recipes 

1 inch? 2 inch?

ArcaneXor

Recipes 

I fill them up all the way with my gravity bottling wand. After pulling it out, it leaves a little more than an inch or so as headspace.

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Memorex88

Recipes 

+1
Same thing here.

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Bartman

Recipes 

Exactly 1.6543 inches. I use my 3 piece precision bottling wand. I think it is produced in the same region of China as my precision 3 piece airlock!

Glubki

Recipes 

I fill them up as stated above but as I pull the wand out I tip it to the side and press it against the inside edge of the bottle top at an angle. This allows me to leave about a half inch of head space.

lmg95

Recipes 

this is also what i do... it seems like if i pull out the bottling wand when the bottle is full is leaves more than 1.5" headspace

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pjcampbell

Recipes 

Does more, or less head room lead to less chance of explosion?

reinbrew

Recipes 

Does anyone out there just guess? I also just use the bottling wand.

Revvy

Recipes 

Well the only way it seems that someone would need to figure it our for themselves would mean that they are bottling in such a way that may be harmful to their beer. Even if you don't have a bottling wand, you should at least be using a piece of hose coming out of the spigot so that you are filling the bottle from the bottom up. That way the co2 that is already present with be pushing an o2 up and out of the bottle as the beer rises.

A tube in the bottle is still going to create a displacement, that when you remove it, will give you headroom.

If you are just cracking open a spigot, or not sticking a hose all the way down to the bottom, then your beer is falling through the air in the bottles, and COULD lead to oxidation.

I don't know if the diameter of a tube will affect the displacement and therefore the amount of headspace in the bottle, but if it's big enough to fit on your spigot more than likely it's going to give you the correct amount of headspace automatically.

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JBmadtown

Recipes 

- I don't think head space will change your risk of explosion. Explosions are usually from incomplete fermentations and so following gravities should prevent this.

- There was a post somewhere that I read talking about how head space will affect carbonation time. I think it was a smaller head space lead to faster carbonation. Something about the CO2 needs to fill the headspace and then create enough pressure to push it back into the beer.