how much head room do you leave at the top of your bottles?

1 inch? 2 inch?

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.

ArcaneXor said:

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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+1
Same thing here.

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!

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.

Glubki said:

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.

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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

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

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

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.

- 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.

Some folks have reported that if they had maybe a little more than half a bottle's worth in their last fill that they capped, it did indeed explode. So I don't know where the safe line of demarcation is on a bottle.

Glubki said:

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.

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I did the same thing with a Pilsner about 3 weeks ago. I tried on on Saturday and it wasn't very carbonated at all. It's my first batch, so it's an agonizing wait!

How long do you need to chill the bottles in the fridge before you open it to allow the co2 to enter the beer? 24 hours long enough?

I think if you have given your bottled beer a long enough conditioning time(3+ weeks) that 24 hrs in the fridge should be fine.

At least that is what I have always done.

chriscraig said:

I did the same thing with a Pilsner about 3 weeks ago. I tried on on Saturday and it wasn't very carbonated at all. It's my first batch, so it's an agonizing wait!

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My carbonation is usually pretty predictable, unless I make a really big beer. However, it's not always that way. I'm pretty consistent in my technique, but then comes the batch.....like the Scottish 80/- batch that's sitting down in the basement now, and just -barely- starting to carbonate. Priming sugar, 5 oz. of dextrose, check. Three weeks in the bottle above 70F, check. It'll be in the bottle 10 weeks tomorrow, and it's just carbonating very slowly. And that's all there is to it.