Skipping the Bottling Bucket and Racking Straight to Bottles

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comet909

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I was talking with a friend after listening to an old Homebrew Podcast.

We got onto the idea of skipping the bucket. I know you could use the carbonation drops but those seem kind of expensive to spend-thrift like me.

I like the idea of measuring out your sugar and boiling it with water just like you normally would. Then, weigh the solution. Divide the total weight by an estimate of the number of beers your bottling. Weigh your Eye Dropper or Syringe. Draw sugar solution into syringe until you've got the weight. Mark the level on the syringe. Fill each bottle individually from the eye dropper or syringe.

Filling the bottles would take about 10 to 15 seconds. So for a batch your talking about 10 minutes. Resulting in less oxygen exposure. Less worry about priming sugar mixing homogenously. Less chance of infection and less dissinfecting and cleanup.

Anybody tried something like this? Thoughts?

Anybody ever try it this way?
 
The conventional wisdom is that you actually tend to get more bottle-to-bottle inconsistency when you add sugar per bottle. That said, I've never heard of anybody doing it with a marked syringe, so maybe that will make the difference.

I would not be at all concerned about the oxidation risk from racking to a bottling bucket, it is trivial to manage that. The other advantages you mention, I suppose are real if you really can get consistency with this method. If you do it, let us know how it works out.
 
Why make your life so hard? Bottling bucket sounds so much easier. You will also get less yeast sediment in the bottles
 
Is the yeast settlement you mention the stuff that would have fallen to the bottom of the bucket?
 
I skip the bottling bucket... always have. If people don't want stuff floating in their beer, I invite them to enjoy an ice cold Silver Bullet. :)
 
It's the trub. Yeast, leftover grain and hops. It gets left behind when you transfer into another vessel, either the secondary and/or bottling bucket.

It you bottle without the bottling bucket the last few bottles may have a lot of yeast as its darn near impossible not to stir it up. Hate the idea of an otherwise great beer overshadowed by a mouthful of yeast
 
sounds like a boatload of hassle to avoid spending a few bucks on a bottling bucket.Not to mention just a plain pain in the ass.
 
I've got spigots on both of mine. It makes things easier. If your buckets don't have them,you can just get the spigots & use a step drill to make the right size hole. And if the spigot has threads,screw it into said hole,don't force it. Easier to assure no leaks that way. My bottling wand goes right into the spigots.
 
How are you going to fill your bottles without aerating them? You going to do it with an auto siphon and bottling wand? You going to have someone try to hold the bottom of the autosiphon in place and above the trub layer while you attempt to manipulate the bottling wand to fill the bottles?

Besides, contrary to what many impatient noobs who open their bottles too soon and blame their uncarbonation on uneven mixing of the sugar (which is BS, the sugar mixes on it's own when you rack on top of it, and quite evenly as it is filling the bucket) priming solution mixes just fine on it's own.

Your way sounds more difficult than the way I do it, and manage to bottle a batch in 45 minutes.

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And with my bottling bucket dip tube, I get nearly all my sediment free (from racking to a bottling bucket) beer.

dip2.jpg



But as I talk about in my bottling sticky, it's all about figuring out what works for you. If this way works for you, then go for it.
 
I forgot about that lil copper elbow you made. Is that The same spigot as BB uses on their ale pale on the inside? My wife has the BB ale pale with the water hose spigot,as they called it. I'd like to make her that mod.:mug:
 
I just rack to a spare carboy and mix the sugar solution in it. I attach my bottling wand to my auto-siphon and have my daughter start the siphon while I hold the wand valve open. We typically fill a batch worth of bottles in aout 20 min. Of course, then we have to cap them.
 
I've been making wine for years, so I'm pretty proficient with racking. But I still rack to a bottling bucket.

It's hard enough to rack without sucking up any sediment, even where there is little in the way of lees or trub. But to try to do that while bottling seems silly to me.

Maintaining a siphon, racking off of the trub, filling bottles appropriately, etc, are all jobs that can require two hands. Unless you've grown additional arms and are an expert at siphoning, a bottling bucket is a huge help.
 
I actually do have extra hands.. three extra, to be exact.. the first extra hand is that cheapy plastic clip that comes with most kits.. I hit it with a few spurts of Star San, clip it onto the bucket, and stick my wand about 2/3 of the way in.

The other two hands belong to the woman. I fill the bottles (while doing the wand/trub/whatever balancing act), she caps and wipes them off and puts them in the boxes. Once we're set up and going, it takes about 20 minutes to fill and cap 12oz bottles.. slightly less if we're doing 22oz bottles.
 
Revvy said:
How are you going to fill your bottles without aerating them? You going to do it with an auto siphon and bottling wand? You going to have someone try to hold the bottom of the autosiphon in place and above the trub layer while you attempt to manipulate the bottling wand to fill the bottles?

Besides, contrary to what many impatient noobs who open their bottles too soon and blame their uncarbonation on uneven mixing of the sugar (which is BS, the sugar mixes on it's own when you rack on top of it, and quite evenly as it is filling the bucket) priming solution mixes just fine on it's own.

Your way sounds more difficult than the way I do it, and manage to bottle a batch in 45 minutes.

And with my bottling bucket dip tube, I get nearly all my sediment free (from racking to a bottling bucket) beer.

But as I talk about in my bottling sticky, it's all about figuring out what works for you. If this way works for you, then go for it.

:off: revvy - what is that white triangley thing between your spigot and the bottling wand
 
JLem said:
:off: revvy - what is that white triangley thing between your spigot and the bottling wand

It's a kwick clamp, meant to be a convenient substitute for a standard worm-drive hose clamp.
 
I've been making wine for years, so I'm pretty proficient with racking. But I still rack to a bottling bucket.

It's hard enough to rack without sucking up any sediment, even where there is little in the way of lees or trub. But to try to do that while bottling seems silly to me.

Maintaining a siphon, racking off of the trub, filling bottles appropriately, etc, are all jobs that can require two hands. Unless you've grown additional arms and are an expert at siphoning, a bottling bucket is a huge help.

I do have have extra hands for now--I have two daughters.:D

Seriously though, with a spring driven bottling wand, keeping a siphon going is not an issue. Once you start it, it stays vacuum tight even if you walk away for awhile. Since I'm using a spare carboy, I don't have a problem with sediment. The only reason I don't use a bottling bucket is I don't want to have to store another beer-only container.
 
Resulting in less oxygen exposure. Less worry about priming sugar mixing homogenously. Less chance of infection and less dissinfecting and cleanup.

Careful racking avoids too much oxygen and what little oxygen you do expose your beer to should be used by the yeast. Racking on top of the priming solution should mix it jsut fine. A bottling bucket is not that hard to sanitize and you are dealing with beer now, not wort. And the bucket is just as easy to clen as it is to sanitize.

IMHO, the best way to make bottling significantly better is to start kegging. You seem to just be overthinking things perhaps.
 
Out of the all the mundane, pain in the ass tasks for bottling day, racking to a bottling bucket, is the least of my concerns. You still would have to sanitize every bottle and cap, boil sugar, etc etc etc. And, I am not sure if a siphon would continue to flow with the start and stop of bottling. IMHO
 
I do have have extra hands for now--I have two daughters.:D

Seriously though, with a spring driven bottling wand, keeping a siphon going is not an issue. Once you start it, it stays vacuum tight even if you walk away for awhile. Since I'm using a spare carboy, I don't have a problem with sediment. The only reason I don't use a bottling bucket is I don't want to have to store another beer-only container.

Well, you're still racking, right? To a spare carboy, and bottling from there? I'm talking about bottling from the fermenter with a bottling wand while siphoning and trying to maintain that. In the new vessel, the end of the racking cane can sit on the bottom, making the siphon easy to maintain. But doing it from the primary wouldn't be so easy! You'd have to keep it above the trub, as well as maintain a siphon, and avoid any sediment. It's easier to to the extra step and rack to a clean/sanitized vessel. My vessel of choice is a bottling bucket but a carboy would work too.

I like to line up my bottles on the dishwasher door, and have the bottling bucket on the counter above, and using a bottling wand on some tubing from the bottling bucket, I just fill them all. Any spills just stay on the grooves on the dishwasher door and don't make a mess at all.

It's a really simple procedure and it doesn't take long at all. Going to extraneous measures (measuring priming sugar individually, trying to siphon and bottle at the same time avoiding trub, etc) just seems silly to me.
 
I've been making wine for years, so I'm pretty proficient with racking. But I still rack to a bottling bucket.

It's hard enough to rack without sucking up any sediment, even where there is little in the way of lees or trub. But to try to do that while bottling seems silly to me.

Maintaining a siphon, racking off of the trub, filling bottles appropriately, etc, are all jobs that can require two hands. Unless you've grown additional arms and are an expert at siphoning, a bottling bucket is a huge help.

I agree completely, except when bottling a one gallon batch of crystal clear wine/mead/cider from a 1-gallon jug.

In that case, I use the mini-autosiphon and the bottle wand on the end of the hose. The first one sucks, but the other nine work fine.
 
Well, you're still racking, right? To a spare carboy, and bottling from there? I'm talking about bottling from the fermenter with a bottling wand while siphoning and trying to maintain that. In the new vessel, the end of the racking cane can sit on the bottom, making the siphon easy to maintain. But doing it from the primary wouldn't be so easy! You'd have to keep it above the trub, as well as maintain a siphon, and avoid any sediment. It's easier to to the extra step and rack to a clean/sanitized vessel. My vessel of choice is a bottling bucket but a carboy would work too.

I like to line up my bottles on the dishwasher door, and have the bottling bucket on the counter above, and using a bottling wand on some tubing from the bottling bucket, I just fill them all. Any spills just stay on the grooves on the dishwasher door and don't make a mess at all.

It's a really simple procedure and it doesn't take long at all. Going to extraneous measures (measuring priming sugar individually, trying to siphon and bottle at the same time avoiding trub, etc) just seems silly to me.

Concur. I was just talking about the lack of a need for a spigot and dedicated vessel.

I keep my bottles in 24 ct. cardboard boxes both to avoid the mess of spillage and to protect against the dreaded bottle domino effect. As a bonus, I get an assembly-line-like boost to my filling efficiency. I also bottle in my garage so I don't worry about any messes.
 
Good Information Guys. I've still got a couple of weeks till I'll be bottling. I like the idea of bottling from a second carboy. I might give that some thought.
 
Shaneoco1981 said:
Out of the all the mundane, pain in the ass tasks for bottling day, racking to a bottling bucket, is the least of my concerns. You still would have to sanitize every bottle and cap, boil sugar, etc etc etc. And, I am not sure if a siphon would continue to flow with the start and stop of bottling. IMHO

+1 on that. Well, the first part. The first time I bottled, I did rack to a (spigot-less) bucket, but I did the actual bottling via siphon with no spigot, no auto-siphon, no bottling wand, and no way to stop the flow other than crimping the hose. It was a miserable pain in the ass, and I never would have pulled it off without a friend helping me - but it did work, and the only time I lost the siphon was when I accidentally let the intake side go above the beer.

But yeah, racking has got to be the EASIEST part of bottling day!
 
If your trub is below a spigot in a plastic carboy, this would be fairly manageable. But from my experience, even if you didn't have a fermenter with a spigot, it could still work easily with an extra set of hands. Why not try it? Dont let them talk you out of your idea. just because it's not conventional doesn't mean it won't work for you. let me know how it turns out.
 
jsweet said:
+1 on that. Well, the first part. The first time I bottled, I did rack to a (spigot-less) bucket, but I did the actual bottling via siphon with no spigot, no auto-siphon, no bottling wand, and no way to stop the flow other than crimping the hose. It was a miserable pain in the ass, and I never would have pulled it off without a friend helping me - but it did work, and the only time I lost the siphon was when I accidentally let the intake side go above the beer.

But yeah, racking has got to be the EASIEST part of bottling day!

I used to bottle like that. Except I also used a bottling wand attached to the tubing (which was attached to the auto-siphon).

Honestly though, it's just so much easier using a bottling bucket. I actually made a thread where I adapted Revvy's bottling procedure to just use a boil kettle with a spigot, instead of a dedicated bottling bucket. Stainless bottling "bucket" FTW!
 
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