Bottle fillers are awesome!

Crazy that I never tried using a bottle filler before today...

I've spent a ton of time tuning my mashing technique, but for some reason never really thought about how I bottled, so I always just went with a siphon out of a bucket and straight into the bottle, the same way I did on my very first brew. It wasn't my favorite part of the process, but I got used to it and never thought any more about it.

Well, last week I splashed out and spent $5 on a plastic bottle filler. And today I used it to bottle my Oatmeal Stout. Wow! So much less stressful. Slow, steady, easy to stop the flow and take as much time as we needed between bottles, zero spillage, zero aeration, and 100% consistent fill level in every bottle.

Where has this been all my life?

Makes me wonder what other awesomely useful yet trivial time savers I am still missing out on...

Do you have a bottling bucket?

You should try kegging! :rockin:

Not sure how well kegging would work for me, since I give most of my brew away to multiple different friends...

Fortunately I have them all well trained, so I get the bottles back again!

I hear you. I never knew about one until I came upon this site, and this thing could have literally made me decide to brew or not. I always hated the bottle-filling process and made a mess. But I got organized and got me a filler and now it's no longer the huge chore it used to be. I should get another one and use it for my beer gun.

It still never ceases to amaze me that we can't have a bottling thread where someone doesn't feel the need to inform us that kegs exist. You know, we aren't idiots...this forum section is called "Kegging AND Bottling" for Chrissales...I think we're smart enough to know they exist....maybe we like to bottle...maybe we don't have the space to keg...or the money...geez...

AND it was only funny the first 1,000 times someone did it...so it ain't even an original joke anymore.

[/rant]

Anyway here's a thread of some tips and ideas by me and others to make bottling as smooth as any other part of the process.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/revvys-tips-bottler-first-time-otherwise-94812/

Revvy said:

It still never ceases to amaze me that we can't have a bottling thread where someone doesn't feel the need to inform us that kegs exist. You know, we aren't idiots...this forum section is called "Kegging AND Bottling" for Chrissales...I think we're smart enough to know they exist....maybe we like to bottle...maybe we don't have the space to keg...or the money...geez...

AND it was only funny the first 1,000 times someone did it...so it ain't even an original joke anymore.

[/rant]

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Maybe we should start spamming the pro kegging threads with "you should try bottling!!" or "bottling to soo much better. why didnt I start it sooner!?!" or "once you bottle, you never look back!"...

I'm a bottler and proud of it dammit!!!

UnaBonger said:

Maybe we should start spamming the pro kegging threads with "you should try bottling!!" or "bottling to soo much better. why didnt I start it sooner!?!" or "once you bottle, you never look back!"...

I'm a bottler and proud of it dammit!!!

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Believe me 'bonger...I've considered it

Great minds (great evil minds) :rockin:

I have kegs and they are good, but I will still bottle because I don't have enough keg space, and frankly I like bottles too. With bottles I can stash some in a minifridge in the garage for when I'm working on the car or doing whatever. I'm sure not going to haul the kegerator out there all the time!

Plus, sometimes I want to brew something that I might drink here and there, but I would rather keg the stuff that I might want more often.