Bottling Tips for the Homebrewer

tennesseean_87 said:

Here's a question--the info in this thread states that

1. a dunkelweizen should be carbed to 3.5-4.8 volumes CO2.
2. a standard bottle can only take 3 volumes.

Is an undercarbed DW still tasty? Has anyone carbed at higher levels? I've got one in primary now and am trying to decide what to do with it (kegging not an option). Thanks!

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I would go 2.5 for it and put in regular 12 oz bottles. Any higher and you will have a chance of exploding bottles. If you want to do higher use some 22 oz that some Belgians come in.

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Is it possible to completely remove yeast sedimentation from your bottles by transferring from the fermenter to another?

chandlerbayou said:

Is it possible to completely remove yeast sedimentation from your bottles by transferring from the fermenter to another?

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Completely? No. It's better than nothing, but without filtering, there'll be something. Of course, I'd love to have someone demonstrate otherwise!

chandlerbayou said:

Is it possible to completely remove yeast sedimentation from your bottles by transferring from the fermenter to another?

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If you're bottle conditioning beer, whether it is commercial or homebrew YOU WILL ALWAYS HAVE SOME SEDIMENT. You can't avoid it. You can reduce it greatly, but it's always going to be there.

Read this, about how I get very little sediment in my bottles.

And read this about how real beer geeks don't fear the yeast in their bottles. Only BMC drinkers do.

hello people!

hope i'm at the right place for the question. i'm relatively new to both this forum and homebrewing. i'm not a complete idiot though. here's what's bothering me: my gf and i have made 3 batches so far. the first and the only successful one was some sort of improvised all grain ale. beginners luck. turned out gr8 imo. the other two went sour. one key thing that needs to be mentioned is that the first batch was cooled right after we boiled it, although due to lack of proper equipment the cooling took like 3-4 hours. the second two stayed overnight in the fridge till the temperature dropped to between 20 and 25 degrees celsius. both times we were somehow really drunk and unable to cool the wort instantly. but both times the wort was in the bioreactor and sealed. anyway. after one week in the bioreactor (we used safale yeasts, and this is safales declarative period for primary fermentation) we tasted the beer and it was GOOD. no off tastes, it wasn't sour, nothing. then I the idiot suggested before bottling that we should put more priming sugar (since the first batch was slightly undercarbonated imo) and so the whole batch was ruined. every single bottle was overcarbonated and beer gushed out of it like champagne and tasted sour. some stuff sedimented on the bottom of the bottles as well. we did some researching and thought it was an infection (my gf is a biotechnologist btw and she said that it's either that or overcarbonation, although she doesn't have much practical experience with brewing, only theoretical) so we repeated the same thing again, but this time we were even more rigid with sanitation. like ocd-rigid. and again i put cca. half a teaspon priming sugar per 1/2 liter bottle. and it happened again. sour beer gushing out of the bottles ALTHOUGH it tasted great before we bottled it and the sugar was added. any ideas? infection? overcarbonation? wort stayed overnight? i appreciate any help. many thanks in advance.

nice illustrations and pics guys.. here's VIDEO of BOTTLING & KEGGING .. when done with friends.. its really fun! [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrCIL8V7OU0]How to Bottle Beer How to Keg Beer - Epic Beer Dude - YouTube[/ame]

sheechba said:

half a teaspon priming sugar per 1/2 liter bottle. and it happened again. sour beer gushing out of the bottles ALTHOUGH it tasted great before we bottled it and the sugar was added. any ideas? infection? overcarbonation? wort stayed overnight? i appreciate any help. many thanks in advance.

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You will find the beer will be better if you can mix all the priming sugar (calculated with a priming calculator) into the beer before bottling, rather than measuring into each bottle. You can get some great variation bottle to bottle. Carb drops are okay, but raw sugar is hard to get right.

Hi Sheebcha, priming sugar is normally added byboiling it for 15 mins in water to make a sanitised bulk priming solution. You must be introducing infection with your unboiled sugar
L

iijakii said:

I actually like using a long piece of hosing so I don't have to hold a bottle up right under the spigot. But, that's solely dependent on how your rig is setup.

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I think I'm going to do it this way, too. When I bottled apfelwein, I used card drops and went straight from the better bottle into to bottles via auto-siphon, and liked moving the hose as opposed to bottles. I think it would be especially easy if you're using milk crates, etc. to just move the wand from one bottle to the next, rather than lifting the bottles out and putting them back.

Well it's been said a thousand times now, but this thread was so incredibly helpful as I prepared for bottling day. I installed a $.65 3/4" PVC elbow for a dip tube, and only left 1 ounce of beer behind in the bottling bucket. I poured what was left into a shot glass to measure it. Unbelievable. And installing the wand directly to the spigot was another lifesaver. Thanks again to Revvy and everyone else who contributed. This forum is an incredible resource to those of us that are always looking for ways to improve our process.

Thanks to Revvy and everyone else who has posted their tips here. I bottled my first batch yesterday and it went without any issues... Maybe 1 hr start to finish! Now 3 weeks at 70°! Revvy, I have been paying attention!

Thanks again...

Any tips on getting your siphon started better w/o having the auto-siphon? I use a large syringe currently but still struggle a little.

There are some fairly decent explanations of how to start your syphon on youtube....auto syphon rocks though, spend 10 bucks and get one!

Is there a recommended size of copper tube for the dip tube? Will 1/4" work?

owentp said:

Is there a recommended size of copper tube for the dip tube? Will 1/4" work?

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Whatever fits in the hole in the stopper, and it doesn't need to be copper, it can be plastic, I've since replaced it with a piece of bent racking cane, that I melted over a candle flame.

Thanks to Rev and everyone for the tips, my bottling went awesome last weekend with all the advice. As for the dip tube, I got a #3 drilled stopper and a piece of 7/16 o.d. tubing at the LHBS. With the spout for my bucket (drilled my own) and the piece for the wand it was like $4. Worked great!

This is a great thread. It really helped me, even in a small cluttered apartment kitchen. It took me a little over 2 hours to go from the primary fermenter being in the closet to having 45 bottles and cleaned equipment.

Yet another set of kudo's for this post. I took the bottling wand and put straight on the spicket. Nice to free up a hand. Now I just need to get the diptube in place. I didn't have a chance to do that for yesterday's bottling session. But is next on my list to do. Thanks to Revvy for putting this together. Just wished I had read it prior to my first batch.

pmd5700 said:

This is a great thread. It really helped me, even in a small cluttered apartment kitchen. It took me a little over 2 hours to go from the primary fermenter being in the closet to having 45 bottles and cleaned equipment.

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you have a toilet i your kitchen?

was that a threaded 3/4 elbow that attached onto the back threads of the spout? Did you file an angle?

So the clear pvc tubing worked well?

xxhugexx said:

you have a toilet i your kitchen?

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:rockin:

xxhugexx said:

you have a toilet i your kitchen?

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Unfortunately, no. I have the same cabinets in the kitchen and the bathroom.

owentp said:

So the clear pvc tubing worked well?

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If you were referring to my clear tubing, it worked awesome. The #3 stopper fit perfectly in the spout and it picked up all the way to the bottom.

I have trialed all the methods here....racking cane bent, 3/4 PVC piece, even just vinyl tubing and it doesn't work. Any ideas?

owentp said:

I have trialed all the methods here....racking cane bent, 3/4 PVC piece, even just vinyl tubing and it doesn't work. Any ideas?

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Bottom drain bucket!?

You could hang a bucket by the handle, boil a few gallons of water and pour it in. That should give enough weight and heat to distort the bucket. Then you can drill a hole in the center and add the spout. All your looking for is the center of the bucket to be lower just like the drain in a shower.

Just an idea.

owentp said:

I have trialed all the methods here....racking cane bent, 3/4 PVC piece, even just vinyl tubing and it doesn't work. Any ideas?

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DakotaRules had a good idea there. Can you give a better idea of the results you're getting? Is it just not draining all the way, or not flowing well at any volume? How high up do you have your bucket compared to your bottling wand? The laws of physics dictate that all of those methods should work as long as your receptacle is lower than the bottom of the bucket.

My spigot is approx. 1" from bottom of the bucket. Even with my attempts using dip tubes and having the bottle filling wand, which is long, it has a slower drain and it stops with about and inch of fluid in the bucket. I have an acutally bottling bucket with pre-drilled hole.

I stumbled across this recently and it's worked great for me. I didn't have as much luck with it set just touching. However, when bent into a C shape with a slightly diagonal cut (not intentional but worked out fabulously). This required a slight tilt to the bucket but left about half a cup tops.

So much info to digest in one thread - my spigot on my lone bottling bucket broke recently, so this gives me the incentive to make a dip-tube mod (something I can't believe I haven't done yet, given all that I've brewed in the past three years).

Also, the info on priming sugar is exceptionally helpful. In a few weekends, I'm going to bottle an all-organic wild honey cider with some dark brown sugar...the first time I'll be using non-corn sugar to prime. Freakin' stoked!

owentp said:

My spigot is approx. 1" from bottom of the bucket. Even with my attempts using dip tubes and having the bottle filling wand, which is long, it has a slower drain and it stops with about and inch of fluid in the bucket. I have an acutally bottling bucket with pre-drilled hole.

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just an idea: you may not have a tight seal between your diptube connection and the spiggot. once the fluid level gets to the leak, you lose the siphon effect.

Just a quick question. I have a batch of Irish Red Ale that has been bottled for a little over 3 weeks now and its not really getting any more carbonated. My question is: should I roll the bottles to get the yeast up and active from the bottom or what?

jcotner45 said:

Just a quick question. I have a batch of Irish Red Ale that has been bottled for a little over 3 weeks now and its not really getting any more carbonated. My question is: should I roll the bottles to get the yeast up and active from the bottom or what?

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You don't really have to, you can if you want, but really you just need to give it more time. As I've said repeatedly the 3 weeks at 70 is just a minimum....and a rule of thumb anyway.

There is a ton of great info in this thread. I will be going over it the next few days, thanks for posting!!

I followed your bottling method with the wand on the bucket and the copper pipe inside the bucket,WOW you knocked at least an hour off my bottling time,the only question is with the wand bottomed out in bottle cant really fill all the way the wand takes up space,should still be ok no? this works fantastic takes all the hassle out of bottling

luvinit said:

I followed your bottling method with the wand on the bucket and the copper pipe inside the bucket,WOW you knocked at least an hour off my bottling time,the only question is with the wand bottomed out in bottle cant really fill all the way the wand takes up space,should still be ok no? this works fantastic takes all the hassle out of bottling

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Since you do want a little headspace, it's a convenient bonus of the mechanics of bottling with a wand - the displacement from the wand equals just the right amount*.


* Of course, someone out there disagrees with it being "just the right amount" of headspace, but I think it would be safe to say that the vast vast vast vast majority of people (basically, everybody but that one naysayer) who bottles would agree.

PortlandPatrick said:

Since you do want a little headspace, it's a convenient bonus of the mechanics of bottling with a wand - the displacement from the wand equals just the right amount*.


* Of course, someone out there disagrees with it being "just the right amount" of headspace, but I think it would be safe to say that the vast vast vast vast majority of people (basically, everybody but that one naysayer) who bottles would agree.

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I usually let the volume of the wand create headspace in my 12oz bottles, but if I'm filling 22's I'll pull it about an inch from from the top. That combined with the displacemnt of the wand seems to create headspace more in accordance with what I see from commercial craft beers.

jdubb75 said:

I usually let the volume of the wand create headspace in my 12oz bottles, but if I'm filling 22's I'll pull it about an inch from from the top. That combined with the displacemnt of the wand seems to create headspace more in accordance with what I see from commercial craft beers.

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Good point. I should have mentioned that I was referring to 12oz bottles. I eyeball it with bombers.

Just have to add my thanks here for everyone's tips!
I got my first batch bottled up on Sunday and it was a lot of fun. I used the PVC elbow trick and i worked like a charm!
thanks again everyone, this site and all its users are awesome!

jdubb75 said:

I usually let the volume of the wand create headspace in my 12oz bottles, but if I'm filling 22's I'll pull it about an inch from from the top. That combined with the displacemnt of the wand seems to create headspace more in accordance with what I see from commercial craft beers.

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With my setup, the displacement of the wand creates too much headspace in 12oz bottles. So I end up adding a little more volume by pressing the inside of the bottle neck against the wand tip (or vise versa) to release a little more beer.