Bottling Rant

Rinse 50 bottles
Rinse 50 bottles
Fill 50 bottles with soapy solution
use bottle brush on cordless drill on 50 bottles
Rinse 50 bottles
Wash priming tank
Rinse Priming tank
Fill Priming tank with StarSan solution
Fill 50 bottles with StarSan solution from priming tank
drain 50 bottles
dry 50 bottles
boil 50 caps
boil sugar solution
fill 5 bottles, cap 5 bottles (ten times)

8:30pm - 11:30pm
I value my time at $20/hour -- it is costing me $60/batch in bottling.

What exactly do i need to buy to get into a 3-keg setup?

After how many batches of kegging will the system have paid for itself (how many times $60 does a good 3-keg system cost?)

There's a third option: improve your bottling process

Give your bottles a quick rinse after drinking a beer...that way they're clean and ready to go. That eliminates these steps:
Rinse 50 bottles
Rinse 50 bottles
Fill 50 bottles with soapy solution
use bottle brush on cordless drill on 50 bottles
Rinse 50 bottles

Star San only requires wet contact time; no need to fill up your entire bucket or each bottle. A gallon or so is plenty; just get the sides wet.

Invest in a vinator and bottle tree:


No need to boil the caps. Just a quick dunk in sanitizer (and some of us don't even do that)

Should be able to get it down to an hour, start to finish.

My bottling:

1. Throw empty bottles into bucket with Qxiclean until I feel like taking them out
2. Place (emptied) soaked bottles in tub until I have enough to put away somewhere else
3. On bottling day, fill bucket with Starsan and dump as many bottles in as possible (solution can be reused several times)
4. Prepare priming sugar etc.
5. Drain bottles and put on bottle tree, proceed with all remaining bottles
6. Dump priming sugar into bottling bucket when cool
7. Throw caps into small bowl with Starsan
8. Rack beer onto priming sugar
9. Fill all bottles
10. Cap all bottles.

Takes less than 90 min

You don't have a dishwasher? Clean them the night before that way it breaks up the process and won't seem as time consuming. You don't need to boil your caps. Just leave them in your sanitizing solution while you're transferring from fermentation vessel to bottling bucket. Then take them out 1 by 1. If I start by trying to keep about 50 bottles clean at any given time it takes about 1.5 hours by myself to bottle a complete batch.

i rinse bottles out after pouring, hang them on my Bottle Tree to dry.
Then on bottling day, i fill up my Vinator with a 1 gallon iodophore solution.

Then, give each bottle a couple pumps, place back on bottle tree, and then a few minutes later bottle away.

Saves a lot of time

Norselord said:

Rinse 50 bottles
Rinse 50 bottles
Fill 50 bottles with soapy solution
use bottle brush on cordless drill on 50 bottles
Rinse 50 bottles
Wash priming tank
Rinse Priming tank
Fill Priming tank with StarSan solution
Fill 50 bottles with StarSan solution from priming tank
drain 50 bottles
dry 50 bottles
boil 50 caps
boil sugar solution
fill 5 bottles, cap 5 bottles (ten times)

8:30pm - 11:30pm
I value my time at $20/hour -- it is costing me $60/batch in bottling.

What exactly do i need to buy to get into a 3-keg setup?

After how many batches of kegging will the system have paid for itself (how many times $60 does a good 3-keg system cost?)

Click to expand...

Good God, I would quit brewing if that was my bottle routine.

TyTanium said:

There's a third option: improve your bottling process

Click to expand...

This....if it's taking more than an hour to bottle, you're doing something wrong. It's not bottling, it's HOW you bottle.

Read my bottling sticky for ideas.

For one thing you shouldn't be drying you bottles.

Revvy said:

This....if it's taking more than an hour to bottle, you're doing something wrong. It's not bottling, it's HOW you bottle.

Read my bottling sticky for ideas.

For one thing you shouldn't be drying you bottles.

Click to expand...

This.

My only annoyance with the bottling process is when I have to de-label. Then it's just a soak in Oxy, rinse, drying rack. Otherwise, I rinse after pouring then into a case. Submerge in StarSan and empty as I bottle.

Vinator and bottling tree easily cut an hour off of my process. I now bottle two full cases in less than an hour, assuming that I've already delabeled the bottles.

And yeah, hot water rinse of bottles when you empty them means that there is no scrubbing required. Fill half way with hot water from the tap. Shake like crazy. Repeat three or four times. Set bottle aside to dry.

Process for me:

1. Sanitize bottling tree with starsan (I simply dunk each tier in the solution, then assemble them). Dunk caps in saitizer, set on clean towel for use later. Time: 5 minutes

2. Sanitize each bottle with a couple of pumps on the vinator. Place bottles on tree. Time: 10-15 minutes

3. Boil priming sugar solution, add to bottling bucket. Rack beer onto bucket. To save time, this can be done at the same time as step #2.

4. Sit in floor within easy reach of bottle tree and bucket. Fill all bottles. (never have to move, as I can rotate bottle tree to get all bottles) Time: 15-20 minutes.

5. Cap bottles and place in boxes. Time: 10-15 minues.


Total time: 55 minutes, tops... and that's with my five year old "helping" (i.e. he sets caps on some bottles, he fills some bottles, he uses the vinator a few times... any one of which takes 3-4 times as long as it would for me to do it).

Yeah no offense OP, but your bottling process is awful. You can easily remove half the steps.

As others have said, rinse bottles right after drinking, so no need to ever wash them. Rinse out your bottling bucket, toss in some star san, give each bottle a quick dunk and you're good to go. You don't need to boil caps, you don't need to dry the bottles after dunking (in fact you don't want to let star san dry, it makes it less effective), and you don't need to fill everything with Star San. The surface needs to be wet, that's it.

My process has defintiely evolved. I used to do dishwasher sanitizing, I tried the "dunk each bottle" method. Bottle tree/vinator is at least twice as fast.

You can't say your HOBBY is costing x/dollars an hour unless you are renting/buying/hiring something/someone to do it or you are giving up actual paid works hours to do it (and that's still your choice).

Buying a kegging system is not going to save you any money it's going to cost you. What it will save you is time and hassle (having a kegging system also has other benefits besides eliminating bottling, take that in to consideration as well). Is that worth the cost to you? If yes then fill your boots. Try some of the suggestions above to streamline you bottling procedure before making a final decision.

BTW I don't know what you do for a living but I wouldn't pay anyone $20/hr to bottle homebrew.

I use the rinse/bottle tree/vinator/bottle tree method.
Every so often I use the dish washer because the outside of the bottle needs some love every once in a while.

homebrewdad said:

My process has defintiely evolved. I used to do dishwasher sanitizing, I tried the "dunk each bottle" method. Bottle tree/vinator is at least twice as fast.

Click to expand...

I need to pick up som StarSan at my LHBS this week. This thread is reminding me that I need to invest in a tree/vinator.

I just rinse my bottles after I use them. When it comes time for bottling day, I just throw them in the dishwasher without detergent to sanitize them.

geoffm33 said:

I need to pick up som StarSan at my LHBS this week. This thread is reminding me that I need to invest in a tree/vinator.

Click to expand...

Definitely some of the best return on investment that I've gotten.

DaNewf said:

Buying a kegging system is not going to save you any money it's going to cost you. What it will save you is time and hassle (having a kegging system also has other benefits besides eliminating bottling, take that in to consideration as well). Is that worth the cost to you? If yes then fill your boots. Try some of the suggestions above to streamline you bottling procedure before making a final decision.

Click to expand...

And sometimes honestly it can be as much as a hassle as bottling, and requires developing a good system to do so...which only having been kegging less that a year I still haven't mastered. AND last week when I put a carboy in there to cold crash I hit something and now have a leak...That I can't find, and went through a bottle of co2 over night, even after doing the soap test and not finding anything.

So kegging isn't all roses and chocolate either.

It's not that bad.
1 Wash them with hot water after drinking them
2 rinse with star san and drain in dishwasher
3 fill
4 cap

not so hard

Bottling takes me no time. For starters I think your soapy water bottle brush step is largely unnecessary. I've never done it and haven't had a bad batch since replacing my fermenter which went bad. I typically if I'm dealing with bottles fill up my bath tub with water and let them soak the night before while I'm doing other things. Usually all they need after a soak is a shake and they're nearly spotless. If you take all your bottles after drinking them and just rinse them out in your sink you can skip that step entirely.

It takes me all in all about 20 to half an hour to sanitize my bottles (depending on how focused on doing the work I am)

Also I've never boiled a cap a day in my life. I know some recommend it but I see it as largely an unnecessary step. If you are concerned about them just drop them in star san. Also yo udon't have to let the bottles dry after starsan.

Though i can 100% commiserate with wanting to switch to kegging. For me my large batches aren't brewed at home, I brew them at my brothers, so it's an extra long day for me (add 45 minutes for commute) where if I can save 30-40 minutes and just rack to a keg that will make my life easier. We're in the process of slowly moving to kegs. Need just 2 more expensive parts, the regulator and Co2 tank. I picked up my Corny's for cheap and am watching craigslist for CO2 tanks.

m3n00b said:

It's not that bad.
1 Wash them with hot water after drinking them
2 rinse with star san and drain in dishwasher
3 fill
4 cap

not so hard

Click to expand...

I love the idea of #2. I'm having a "Why didn't I think of that?" moment.

I've bottled only one batch thus far (and bottled only a twelve pack out of my 5 gallon batch, the rest went into those 5L mini-kegs), but...

Spray the dishwasher racks with StarSan, and use the prongs as my bottle tree. Hmmm....

Have you had any problems with residual dishwashing detergent or anything like that?

Cheers!

zachattack said:

Yeah no offense OP, but your bottling process is awful. You can easily remove half the steps.

As others have said, rinse bottles right after drinking, so no need to ever wash them. Rinse out your bottling bucket, toss in some star san, give each bottle a quick dunk and you're good to go. You don't need to boil caps, you don't need to dry the bottles after dunking (in fact you don't want to let star san dry, it makes it less effective), and you don't need to fill everything with Star San. The surface needs to be wet, that's it.

Click to expand...

I'm only slightly anal when it comes to making sure my bottles are cleaner than when they were born.

What is this thing you all refer to as dishwasher?! I AM the dishwasher.

All kidding aside, my house was built in 1975 and has the original dishwasher, it does not sanitize or even hold bottles very well. Reading the whole thread, it does appear like i am adding about 5 extra steps. That is probably due to some chemical laboratory background as well as professional kitchen experience.

I should rinse and wash bottle after each pour and let be it, but i don't know if something crawled or settled in the bottle while it was waiting between uses.

I do my bottling/fermenting in the basement bathroom, where i removed the shower head and attached a garden hose with spray nozzle for a pretty high-powered and hot jet.

Based on all of your advice, this is what i will end up doing:
1) buy a bottle tree and vinator
2) hot rinse after each pour or at the very least at the end of the night.
3) quick rinse prior to bottling
4) vinator disinfection
5) soak caps in star-san
6) switch from 12oz bottles to 22oz bottles (~20 fewer bottles)
7) bottle
8) accept that bottles don't need to be surgically clean.

Def read Revvys post on bottling, its helped me out alot. If u wanna go the keg route, which isn't a bad idea, check out nextag.com for a three tap system. I got my dual tap edgestar there and i love it. The total bill for the setup and CO2 tank was $609 dollars thanks to shopping around for free shipping. A 3 tap would obviously be more but if u wanna buy direct from someplace u could find a good deal there.

Another option is too check out Keezer builds if ur inclined to go that route. Thats a good option for any setup with more then two taps and may be a bit cheaper then a 3 tap kegerator (and some use their keezers as fermentation chambers/lagering vesses). Thats the setup i moved to since i was sick of bottling but im also looking now at options for filling bottles direct from my corney kegs.

Norselord said:

I should rinse and wash bottle after each pour and let be it, but i don't know if something crawled or settled in the bottle while it was waiting between uses.

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If you store your empties in a box then line the bottom of it with paper towel and put the bottles in upside down. Maybe change out the paper towel every so often if it makes you feel better. I put them on my bottle tree to drip for a while before putting them in the boxes so the paper towel doesn't get soaked.

I generally only "wash" (oxiclean soak, brush if required) a bottle once, after it first comes into my house. For bottles from beer I buy this is just to remove the label. For donated empties I do it to remove label and clean out the gunk (it can get gross). After that just rinse the bottle with hot tap water as soon as you can after pouring it.

No cleaning required on bottling day, just sanitizing.

Revvy's thread is a great read. I rinse my bottles as i drink them. clear out the dish washer, throw in some starsan and turn on the heated drying, and then run. They are waiting for me in a nice sealed sanitized location when i get of work. Plus they have time to cool all the way down. I then bottle from the keg. This is the quickest easiest way for me so far.

http://thefastrack.ca/homebrew/

I also bought a set of these as an alternative to a bottle tree. Pour a beer, rinse, and the throw it into this. Works great! It also is great for mass delabeling days.

I find having a good pump-spray bottle around works wonders! I fill it up with Aseptox (a peroxide mineral powder you do up liek starsan) mix and use that to spray EVERYTHING. Spray priming bucket, spray bottles, spray the counter, spray the dog.... I fill a bucket with enough water to use my siphon-pump to clean my tubing, and all my canes and stir spoon go in there and get sprayed..
I quickly water rinse bottles (to remove dust) and then spray with Aseptox and let them sit overnight. Another quick spray on bottling day, let it drain out til only a few drops remain and then start bottling. Caps in a tupperware of boiled water or no-rinse santizer. I also have EZ cap bottles, which i rinse and spray the inside, set the cap on loosely and they wait until bottling time/day.

Way better then soaking in a tub/bucket, draining, scrubbing, drying, santizing. I just lost the fear of a few drops of no-rinse sanitizer ruining my beer. It simply won't, and once I got that through my head bottling day is much easier.

Well, to answer your initial question, it definitely won't cost you 600 bucks to get into kegging. I started off with a 2 keg kit from Keg Connection for about $180 plus an old refrigerator that I already had. The cost of cornies has gone up considerably since then, so I'd figure $230 or so for the same setup now. One thing I learned, though is not to bother buying a bottle from anyone other than your local gas supplier or maybe craigslist. They mostly run exchanges on 5 lb bottles, so if you end up spending some bucks on a shiny new aluminum cylinder, odds are, you're going to end up with a rusty steel one when you swap it out.

Revvy, I'm curious to know where you're having trouble with your process (aside from the random leak). It's pretty simple from my point of view. When I kick a keg, it gets an hour or two soak in oxyclean, a thorough rinse, and a few pints of StarSan. Then just seal, shake to distribute the sanitizer, and set aside to fill next time.

About every 5 or 6 batches, I go ahead and break 'em down and clean the posts and tubes. If you have a rifle cleaning kit, a .25 cal brush works great to clean a dip tube. Also, if you do need to do some leak checking, StarSan works great. It bubbles up nicely and if it gets in your system, it doesn't hurt anything.

isleofman said:

http://thefastrack.ca/homebrew/

I also bought a set of these as an alternative to a bottle tree. Pour a beer, rinse, and the throw it into this. Works great! It also is great for mass delabeling days.

Click to expand...

Fastrack is a neat idea, but over priced IMNSHO

It doesnt seem to be mentioned here, so i will: I sanitize all my bottles ahead of time, then cover the top with aluminum foil. I leave my bottling bucket full of starsan so i can sanitize small batches as I go, usually 6-12 at a time:
-Dunk all bottles in starsan bucket
-rip pieces of aluminum foil into squares
-pour out starsan back into bucket and over top of Al foil square
-leave foam in bottle and wrap top with Al foil

On bottling day, I bottle on my dishwasher. I take off the Al foil and throw it on the floor, one quick shake into dishwasher and fill. Caps sit in a tupperware of starsan on the counter.

It can be tedious if I have a ton of bottles to do all at once (and de-labeling sucks), but if you stay on top of them, bottling day is a breeze.

Bottling is easy.

I aways rinse my bottles well when I pour them. Then. on bottling day all that is required is a quick squirt of Starsan and they are ready to go. I do 12 at a time and put them in the dishwasher. Fill, repeat.

I usually bottle on brew day. Rack to bottling bucket while mas water is heating up. Start my mash and bottle. I am done well before the mash is done.

I keg, and always have a couple of beers on tap. I have a nitro tap so a stout or Irish Red is always on that. The other tap is usually an IPA. Quite honestly, I prefer bottles. I like a lot of variety and always have 8-10 diferent brews in my beer fridge. I also brew. alot of Belgians/Saisons that I like to put aside to age. I have about 20 different brews in varying amounts in bottle. I could never do that with kegs.

Get a good process down and bottling is very simple.

Last weekend i just hit the 50 gallon mark...clearly i am still very new and need to refine my processes.

Your input is very helpful and bound to improve me and my mission!

Another option is to cover bottle openings with a little foil and bake for 1 hr at 350 degrees. Then you can let them sit forever until you need them.

Rinse bottles immediately after use.
Shoot starsan into bottles at bottling time with vinator.
Bottle.

Repeat.

I quit taking the labels off bottles. I don't label my own, I don't enter comps, and it's the inside (not the outside) I'm worried about. I rinse the hell out of my bottles after pouring. I use the injector & bottle tree. when I first started brewing, I filled my bottling bucket with sanitizer solution, filled each bottle, drained back into the bucket, then sanitized caps.it was a very long & wasteful process. I learned quick to make it easier & faster.

Rinse bottles after every use, on bottling day place in dishwasher on sterilization cycle, place bottle caps in basket in dishwasher.

Run
Cool
Fill
Cap
Done!

geoffm33 said:

I need to pick up som StarSan at my LHBS this week. This thread is reminding me that I need to invest in a tree/vinator.

Click to expand...

One of my best purchases. Bottling alone 5 gallon batches 45 minutes start to finish.

My dishwasher seems to spray food particles into the bottles and then dry them in place. It is some European model dish drawer design, ok for dishes but not bottles.

I've been soaking bottles in weak oxyclean solution, rinsing well with jet bottle washer, drying on bottle tree, storing in boxes
Bit of starsan on bottling day and I'm good to go

My bottling process is a two step process. I use a bottle jet washer and jet wash the inside of each bottle and stack in the dishwasher. This takes about 15 minutes because I do both 12 and 22 ouncers and they have to go in just so. Used to take 10 minutes with just 12's. I then run the dishwasher over night to sanitize and rinse bottles.

In the morning ready to bottle I do something similar to Reevy's set up, but in my kitchen over the dishwasher door. To fill and cap roughly 5.5 gallons of brew takes about 30-40 minutes depending on what music is playing...

I fill all the bottles and cap them all at the same time. Why? I don't see a problem waiting to bottle because the entire bottling bucket is open the whole time to begin with, so a couple minutes bottled waiting for caps shouldn't be a problem.

What Reevys sticky does is give you a good idea on how to maximize the process with a minimum level of effort.

lgilmore said:

My bottling process is a two step process. I use a bottle jet washer and jet wash the inside of each bottle and stack in the dishwasher. This takes about 15 minutes because I do both 12 and 22 ouncers and they have to go in just so. Used to take 10 minutes with just 12's. I then run the dishwasher over night to sanitize and rinse bottles.

In the morning ready to bottle I do something similar to Reevy's set up, but in my kitchen over the dishwasher door. To fill and cap roughly 5.5 gallons of brew takes about 30-40 minutes depending on what music is playing...

I fill all the bottles and cap them all at the same time. Why? I don't see a problem waiting to bottle because the entire bottling bucket is open the whole time to begin with, so a couple minutes bottled waiting for caps shouldn't be a problem.

What Reevys sticky does is give you a good idea on how to maximize the process with a minimum level of effort.

Click to expand...

I put a sanitized lid on my bucket when bottling.