"how to" question

Hi.

Please explain the bottling technique to me. When I syphon into bottling bucket and add my corn sugar, do I then attache the tubing to the spigot at the bottomof the bucket? then turn it on and it won't come out until I depress the wand? Or does everybody do it differently?

Also, could you use regular table sugar for carbonation as well?

Yeah, you've got it. Make sure the bucket is elevated above where you're bottling. Boil up the corn sugar in a little bit of water for ten minutes or so to sanitize, cool it down, add it to the bucket, then rack on top of it (the beer siphining in will circulate and mix it in).

Attach your sanitized hose and bottling wand to the spigot, then turn on the spigot. The hose will fill, then when you place the wand in the bucket, the tip will depress and the beer will fill the bottle. Once it gets to the top, remove the wand (the flow will stop automatically, and there will be a perfect amount of headpsace from the displacement of the wand.

I like to bottle on the dishwasher door, so that spills (there will be some) are contained. The top of the wand has a tendancy to occassionally stick, just be aware.

Personally, I wouldn't bother with table sugar; it'll work, but corn sugar is cheap enough, why mess around?

the_bird said:

The top of the wand has a tendancy to occassionally stick, just be aware.

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Yeah this is a good heads up. I found that a quick jab (tap to the bottom of the bottle) downward remedies it.

Here's the way I do it:

I measure out the corn sugar and boil it in about a pint of water for several minutes in the microwave. I cool this solution down by setting the measuring cup in the sink in an ice water bath for a few minutes just so it isn't near boiling. The solution is poured into the bottom of the bottling bucket, and the beer is racked into the bucket on top of the sugar. I would recommend slowly stirring the beer/sugar mixture once the bucket is filled (just try not to agitate it enough to start making bubbles - you're getting air into it if you do that). I didn't do that last time and my carbonation was a little inconsistent from bottle to bottle.

I put my bottling bucket on the kitchen counter and my primary fermenter bucket on the floor under the spigot/wand as a waste catching bucket for overflows and sanitizer foam dripping off the bottles. I put a long sheet of wax paper under my bottling bucket that runs from it down into the waste bucket to keep any spashes off of the kitchen drawers. I keep a spray bottle with StarSan solution in it by the bottling setup so I can spray down the wand/spigot periodically.

I keep a wallpaper tray beside the setup in the floor with StarSan in it. My bottle caps go in that, as well as two bottles at a time. As I remove one bottle I put a fresh one in the sanitizer in kind of an assembly line fashion so that they have time to soak for a couple minutes before I get to using them. I cap each bottle as I fill them and set them aside. It works pretty well.

Here's a photo log of how I do it.

Awesome job Buford on the photo description ... That's pretty much my routine except that I use one of these to sanitize the bottles. Makes really quick work of sanitizing.

One little tip that I can give... I cut a small (~1 inch) piece of tubing and attached that to my bottling wand. Then you can slide that onto the spigot on your bottling bucket. As long as the bucket is elevated on a table or counter, you can just slide the bottle in underneath and press upwards to fill. I found this easier than dealing with a longer piece of tubing.

That's really interesting that Buford and JimiGibbs both sanitize, siphon, and cap at the same time. Is this the preferred method?

When I bottle, I do one task at a time: I sanitize all the bottles, then fill all the bottles, then cap all the bottles. This seems to go much quicker for me, as I am not transitioning between tasks for every bottle.

BTW Buford, I really like the photo log. Thanks for sharing!

And Bird, thanks for the dishwasher door tip. That's so obvious I almost feel silly for not thinking about it myself! I've pretty much just been using towels, and occassionally mopping up after a bottling session . . .

I sanitize all the bottles at once, fill them, and then cap them. After filling and before capping I put a cap lossely on top of the bottle in hopes that a small CO2 blanket will form, removing oxygen from the headspace.

mew said:

I sanitize all the bottles at once, fill them, and then cap them. After filling and before capping I put a cap lossely on top of the bottle in hopes that a small CO2 blanket will form, removing oxygen from the headspace.

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What little O2 is left in that headspace isn't a problem. The yeast will take care of it as part of the final little fermentation/carbonatoin process.

Buy or make yourself a bottle tree. I sanitize all the bottles using the wine bottle sulfiter (Alvinatore) then I use the tree to hold the bottles upside down so that they drain and don't get any nasties inside. Then it's just a simple matter of putting a couple dozen bottles on the dishwasher door and filling, then capping them all. My 6 year old is one hell of a capper, so when he helps, the job goes pretty quickly. I just have to keep an eye on him because he likes to sample.

ryser2k said:

One little tip that I can give... I cut a small (~1 inch) piece of tubing and attached that to my bottling wand. Then you can slide that onto the spigot on your bottling bucket. As long as the bucket is elevated on a table or counter, you can just slide the bottle in underneath and press upwards to fill. I found this easier than dealing with a longer piece of tubing.

Click to expand...

This sounds like an EXCELLENT idea to me. I hate using a 3'-4' piece of tube to bottle. This was so simple I can't believe I didn't think of it, but...

THANKS! :rockin: