"Bottling will be Easy"

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Sk84BeeR

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"That's going to be easy, no problem." is what i said to my wife when she asked me what I was going to do when my first attempt at brewing was done. I should have said something else. . . Anything else.

So. I am obviously new to brewing. A friend of mine made a batch of Ed Wort's Apfelwein a few months back and I decided to try it out for myself. I am now 2 weeks in and am more confused then when I started.

I initailly wanted to store the Apfelwein in Mason Jars. I read some on this and it doesn't seem like a good idea. Especially since I would like to start brewing beers for the next endeavor.

My question is this," What should I use to store my brew now and in the future?"

*note* 1)The cheaper the better. 2) I followed the Apfelwien instructions to the letter for those who want to know. 3) I have limited space. 4) I am willing to use something cheap and not fancy for now and save for something nice later on.

Thanks in advance for any responses to this post! I am only on the computer a short time each day, so if my responses to questions are lagging i apologize.
 
I think Mason jars would be cool for apfelwein. No reason they couldn't work...for the still version.

HERE WE GO AGAIN.

Shell out the bucks for a bench capper....then ask your local bar / restaurant if they'll save beer bottles for you. There is a good chance they will already be recycling them, and will just let you Pick up the boxes of empty bottles. They work great for beer, wine, mead...anything you can brew, you can put into beer bottles....just don't forget to label them...or write on the lid with a Sharpie.
 
Bottling IS easy! I sure would like to keg at some point, but bottling is easy enough for me and takes 1-2 hours per 5 gallon batch. Feel free to follow along with my step by step instructions...I make bottling FUN!!!

1. Get bottles. Any pop tops will work. I chose Sierra Nevada because that's what me and my buds drink. The new 24oz bottles are nice...and bottling goes twice as fast, with half as many caps.

2. De-label bottles. Soak the bottles in a bathtub in the hottest tap water with 1/2 cup of bleach. The labels will mostly slide off, then scrub off whatever is left.
NOTE: this only needs to be done once, if you save your bottles each time. I've done this twice, so I can have a total of 10 gallons in bottles at any given time.

3. Put bottles in the dishwasher on "Sanitize" cycle. If you don't have the ability to do this, use some sort of sanitizing solution and store your bottles upside down to drain.

4. Rack from your carboy to bottling bucket...add priming sugar if you want carbonation. I use an Auto Siphon to get the flow started, but the cheapest way is to just use your mouth.

5. Fill 'er up! I use a cheap plastic bottling wand with a spring loaded tip that will dispense fluid when depressed.

6. Cap 'em. A wing capper will work and is cheap, but I love my bench capper...very sturdy and adjusts to the height of any bottle.

7. Store at 70F for 3 weeks. I use a dedicated shelf in my closet, although my wife gave me the frowny face when I took over her sewing shelf! :)
 
Bottles weren't as bad as I thought they'd be. I had nightmarish visions of beer getting spilled everywhere and of bottle bombs bursting and other such atrocities. It was actually rather painless. Like everything else, make sure it is clean and sanitized.

As far as cheap goes, they are definitely that. I've enlisted all my beer drinking buds to give me their used bottles (and they use that as a good excuse to get "good" beer from the grocery store). That right there is free; only costs me a few homebrews for goodwill. Otherwise, you could sort through bottles at a recycling center which is pretty cheap. If that is no good, buy them from the LHBS for about 12-15 bucks per case.

Your long term goals might include a kegerator.
 
2. De-label bottles. Soak the bottles in a bathtub in the hottest tap water with 1/2 cup of bleach. The labels will mostly slide off, then scrub off whatever is left.
NOTE: this only needs to be done once, if you save your bottles each time. I've done this twice, so I can have a total of 10 gallons in bottles at any given time.
This could be an optional step. A friend of mine has stopped delabeling.
 
WOW! Thanks for the responses guys! I've been freaking out mainly from the thought of downing a bunch of cash right off the bat. My local homebrew store sells the bottling equipment i need, but that's a big chunk of cash I don't have. I know I can swing the capper and caps, but it was killing me to think of paying good money for EMPTY bottles,haha. I honestly hadn't thought of getting bottles from my buds or the bar.
This brings up another question: If I DON'T carb the Apfelwein can I store it in basically anything air-tight? ex. 2 Liter Soda Bottles, Glass Tea Dispenser, Plastic Gallon Jugs

If this is so, i'd prefer to wait and fanagle some really good bottles. Thanks!
 
As long as you are sure the apfelwein is done fermenting (the hydrometer sample is below 1.000) then you can put it in pretty much anything air tight. I actually ran out of wine bottles on my last batch of wine and have 2 quart mason jars of wine in the fridge. I'll give those to friends who think I brew hooch anyway ;)
 
If I DON'T carb the Apfelwein can I store it in basically anything air-tight? ex. 2 Liter Soda Bottles, Glass Tea Dispenser, Plastic Gallon Jugs
I would say yes, but were it me I wouldn't seal it up in anything not designed to hold pressure unless I refrigerated it immediately (soda bottles are designed to hold some pressure). If it has finished fermenting you won't have any problems but I'd take the "better safe than sorry" approach. Actually, I'm of the overly-safe school; I wouldn't seal it up in anything glass that's not designed to hold some pressure even if I did refrigerate it.

Rick
 
Soda bottles have the added advantage that if there is some residual fermentation, (shouldn't be if two hydro readings come out the same), they will hold a certain amount of pressure which can be tested by giving the bottle a squeeze, no carbonation it will squeeze, getting harder as carbonation increases...
 
When I am out of bottles, I go to the local recycling place. They will let me dig around the glass and get whatever bottles I can. :mug:
 
Bottling is easy but, very monotonous.

Just tell the wife you were reffering to kegs as one big bottle. It doesn't get any easier than that.
 
Hello! thanks again for the great responses! For those that want to know, I am going to go ahead with the 2 Liter soda bottles for the Apfelwein (I'll be serving out of a pitcher anyway). And I have been officially approved for building a Keggerator by the wifey. (Don't know how I swung that one considering the limited space in our house) So now on to saving and research! Any suggestions on cornie kits? I'm looking at buying a used mini-fridge that will hopefully fit a cornie. any experiences with this? Thanks Again!
 
When I am out of bottles, I go to the local recycling place. They will let me dig around the glass and get whatever bottles I can. :mug:

Same here...but I don't have to dig...I just ask for Sam Adams bottles and they sell them back to me for the cost of deposit ($0.05 each) + a small fee for the boxes (I think I paid around $7 for 4 cases total).

Cleaning got old fast. I cut the loop end off my bottle brush and stuck it in my cordless drill...that helped speed up the internal scrubbing.

-JMW
 
I dream about being able to keg my beer but since I can't afford the cut in the short-term, I'm stuck bottling.

I go to my LHBS and get a case of bottles for about $12. I asked my favorite restaurant a couple weeks ago to save me bottles, which has turned out really well and saves me money!

As for bottling itself, it is slightly annoying to do, yet every now and then it's a really nice relaxing exercise...but I'd still trade it in a heartbeat for kegs any day :). Bottling takes me about an hour with cleanup. The thing that took me the longest to get over was using the auto-syphon with the bottling wand, which (for me at least) doesn't work together unless I apply pressure to the wand as I begin syphoning.

I'm new to HBT...and using forums like this, so hopefully I won't be as boring as time progresses.
 
I've got my bottling process so dialed in that it isn't a chore and I'm done in about an hour to an hour and a half...I put on a basic Brewing Podcast and just go to town.

A couple things really helped make it smoother.

1) Mounting the bottling wand directly to the spigot of my bottling bucket, and setting the bucket on a pot...

bottling_wand.jpg


This puts the top of the beer bottle at eye level. No overspill.

bottling1.jpg


2) I put a dip tube in the bottling bucket. I get everything but about 3-4 ounces of beer. No need to tilt the bucket or anything.

dip2.jpg


All I did was take a piece of copper tubing, bend it downward and fit it in a cork that slips tightly into the back of my bottling bucket spout.

dip1.jpg


I don't have the space to keg in my loft, so rather than whine and complain about bottling, I decided to "pimp" my process until I got it down to the smoothest, easiest and quickest thing possible....I'm still tweaking it whenever something comes to me to try. For example, putting it on the pot was the newest refinement. I figure next time if I put the bucket on my brew kettle I may even be able to sit at the table to bottle instead of on the floor.
 
1) Mounting the bottling wand directly to the spigot of my bottling bucket, and setting the bucket on a pot...

This puts the top of the beer bottle at eye level. No overspill.

2) I put a dip tube in the bottling bucket. I get everything but about 3-4 ounces of beer. No need to tilt the bucket or anything.

Wow. That's genius. If I ever bottle condition again, I'm definitely doing this. A little bucket to catch the drips and almost no cleanup.
 
I put my bottling bucket on my upsidedown 5 gallon brewpot and put a towel under the spigot when I bottle. I think I'll start putting a small pot under the spigot though from now on. AND I'll be making that dip tube as well.
 
Hello! thanks again for the great responses! For those that want to know, I am going to go ahead with the 2 Liter soda bottles for the Apfelwein (I'll be serving out of a pitcher anyway). And I have been officially approved for building a Keggerator by the wifey. (Don't know how I swung that one considering the limited space in our house) So now on to saving and research! Any suggestions on cornie kits? I'm looking at buying a used mini-fridge that will hopefully fit a cornie. any experiences with this? Thanks Again!


Congrats on the approval of the keggerator:ban:!!! I really like kegconnection.com for my kegging needs.
As far as a mini-fridge I am sure some else will chime in on that. I used a small chest freezer.
 
I put my bottling bucket on my upsidedown 5 gallon brewpot and put a towel under the spigot when I bottle. I think I'll start putting a small pot under the spigot though from now on. AND I'll be making that dip tube as well.

I just take the small pot that I boiled my priming solution in and put that on the floor under my spigot.
 
I just take the small pot that I boiled my priming solution in and put that on the floor under my spigot.

Revvy...You're a master.
I use the dishwasher to sanitize, then bottle right on the open door of the dishwasher taking bottles out as necessary. Your 2 little tricks there...especially the dip tube for the bucket....pure genius.
 
For Kegerator, I suggest the venerable Sanyo 9412. But, it seems it is no longer being carried by many stores, so if one is too hard to find, maybe try the Oster 5.0 CF model. This size of fridge is about the smallest you can do with standard 5Gal. corneys. I've got a bigger fridge fo rme, but I wanted to be able to stuff more bottles of beer and pop and have a freezer for ice and ice cream (My kegerator is in my hobby room, right behind my computer, so I can enjoy all of my luscious beer and ice cream while playing World of Warcraft...)
 
I bottle over the open dishwasher, that's the greatest. I'll be stealing the idea of the bottling wand and the siphon drain for my next bottling, those are some great tips.
 
I put my bottling bucket on my upsidedown 5 gallon brewpot and put a towel under the spigot when I bottle. I think I'll start putting a small pot under the spigot though from now on. AND I'll be making that dip tube as well.

The other day I bottled mead and put the bottling bucket on the ale pail I had just emptied, so I was able to actually sit at the table comfortably and not the floor.....The only trouble is that when bottling on the floor there's plenty of room all around me to spread out all the stuff I need within arms reach. Not so much with sitting at the table....It was fine for the dozen or so 20 ouncers I was bottling the mead in, but for 2 cases of beer, it may be less convenient for me....

(That's one of the things you, N00bs out there in lurk land, your brewing PROCESS is just as important, maybe more so, then whether you brew all grain, extract, bottle, keg, or dance the jig naked while taking hydro-readings, and you keep making new adjustments, and teaking it, until you get it dialed in to what works for you and makes even the most tedious aspects, like bottling pleasurable.)
 
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