Belgian Beer Bottles 750 ml

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Cold_Steel

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When I bottled 5 gallons of beer I noticed I didnt do a lot of bottling. In fact, I had 21 bottles when I was done. I thougth I would get more. I wanted to find out how to precisely measure 750 ml and then how to duplicate it without flaw each time.
Thanks
 
Are you sure you had a full 5 gallons? If so, you should have ended up with ~25 bottles if you got pretty close to 750ml in each. 21 bottles is about 3 liters too little, I don't know that you could have gotten that much extra in each bottle unless you filled them to the brim. And even then, it still probably wouldn't do it. That's an extra 142 ml in each bottle!
 
Postive I had 5 gallons. Now I fogot to say I used various belgian bottles like chimay, duvel and so on. So it looks like i did loose it filling.
Now, how do I put 750 ml in each time without fail? Is there a tool, technique, what do you think? Great math by the way.
Thanks
 
21 750mL bottles would put you just above 4 gallons. If you had exactly 5 gallons in your bottling bucket, you would have ended up with 25 bottles. Not really a huge jump. Your post makes it sound like you were expecting significantly more than 21 bottles. 750 mL is about 25 oz, which is 2 regular bottles. When I bottled, I rarely ended up with exactly 50 bottles. It was always in the 40ish range.

Are you sure you started with exactly 5 gallons in the bucket? A lot of people brew 5.5 or 6 gallon batches to account for trub loss from the kettle, and racking losses. If you brew a 5 gallon batch, it will be hard to end up with exactly 5 gallons in the end.

As far as measuring out exactly 750mL - why sweat it?
 
First thing that comes to mind is to measure out 750 ml of water, pour it into one of the bottles, mark it, dump it into the next bottle, mark it, etc. That wouldn't risk aeration of the beer and you'd get what you wanted into each bottle independent of shape.

Otherwise you could possibly use in intermediate container while filling, but you have more risk of aeration and/or infection. Rig up a 1L bottle or something marked at 750ml. Hose with valve coming out the bottom. Close the valve, fill to 750, shut off beer from bucket, open valve to fill the bottle.
 
First thing that comes to mind is to measure out 750 ml of water, pour it into one of the bottles, mark it, dump it into the next bottle, mark it, etc. That wouldn't risk aeration of the beer and you'd get what you wanted into each bottle independent of shape.

Otherwise you could possibly use in intermediate container while filling, but you have more risk of aeration and/or infection. Rig up a 1L bottle or something marked at 750ml. Hose with valve coming out the bottom. Close the valve, fill to 750, shut off beer from bucket, open valve to fill the bottle.

Weight might be an option if 750 ml is truly needed.
 
First thing that comes to mind is to measure out 750 ml of water, pour it into one of the bottles, mark it, dump it into the next bottle, mark it, etc. That wouldn't risk aeration of the beer and you'd get what you wanted into each bottle independent of shape.

Otherwise you could possibly use in intermediate container while filling, but you have more risk of aeration and/or infection. Rig up a 1L bottle or something marked at 750ml. Hose with valve coming out the bottom. Close the valve, fill to 750, shut off beer from bucket, open valve to fill the bottle.

Both would work and work well. However they are also going to be labor intensive.
How do the big boys do it?
 
Weight might be an option if 750 ml is truly needed.

Actually thats a really good point. All I have to do is found out the weight of 750 ml then repeat.
Plus it would only add one step to the process. Which would be to set the bottle on the scale.
thats just down and dirty. I LIKE IT!
Thanks.
 
Both would work and work well. However they are also going to be labor intensive.
How do the big boys do it?

Not sure they are too accurate either, at least the smaller breweries. I took home 50 cases of short filled beer from Terrapin once because they couldn't sell it.
 
The "big boys" have expensive machinery to measure and fill.

I like the weight method, just know that the weight of 750 ml will change some with each different beer.
 
The "big boys" have expensive machinery to measure and fill.

I like the weight method, just know that the weight of 750 ml will change some with each different beer.

Could probably be close enough with water, Or do a measurement on a low gravity, mid gravity, high gravity beer and then use that when you bottle one of those.
 
Off the top of my head, it should relate directly the the specific gravity of the final beer. I would check that before using it, but it sounds right.
 
Specific gravity is measured in g/ml, so it's fairly easy to compensate for the mass of 750 mL of beer. Assuming an FG of 1.015, (FG * vol = mass) 761.25 g per bottle. Compare to pure water that's a difference of 11.25 g. It would be easy to fill by mass if you are using a digital scale and quickly tare each bottle. Otherwise you'll need to be quick with the math to account for the bottle weight.

Hope that simple math is right, I'm sure someone will correct me if I am off. :D
 
Weight isn't going to be very easy if you have different bottles. You'll need to weigh each one, then add 757.5 g of a 1.010 beer. 765 mls if the beer is @ 1.020. [required volume * density (specific gravity)]

If you really need consistency, then I'd recommend standardizing your bottles first. Find out how similar the bottles actually are: how close in weight, or how far up the neck does a measured 750 ml actually come?

Then you need to figure out what an acceptable margin of error is. + or - 1 ml? 2 ml? 10 ml?

Given discrepancies in your bottles (whatever that turns out to be) how much liquid will you need to put in them to ensure that they have at least that much in them? For example (pulling numbers out of my ass here), if a mark 2 cm down on the neck has a 5 ml difference between bottles, you'll need to add at least 755 ml to make sure all of them get 750 ml (if that is your goal). Or not, if an acceptable margin of error is 10 ml.

Then devise the best way to get that for the size of operation you are running. You will need to figure out what the error is in this method, too. If it is say +/- 1%, and you again need to get AT LEAST 750 ml beer per bottle, you will again need to overfill by a little (~7.5 ml) to make sure that each bottle gets the minimum amount.

Or something like that. My head is starting to hurt... It really depends on what your goals are. IIRC, you are looking to go pro? Which makes me think you might need a bottling plant. Seems to me microbreweries start out with just kegs for this reason!
 
With a digital scale, the different bottles shouldn't be an issue. Put an empty bottle on the scale, hit tare, fill, and repeat.
 
Weight isn't going to be very easy if you have different bottles. You'll need to weigh each one, then add 757.5 g of a 1.010 beer. 765 mls if the beer is @ 1.020. [required volume * density (specific gravity)]

If you really need consistency, then I'd recommend standardizing your bottles first. Find out how similar the bottles actually are: how close in weight, or how far up the neck does a measured 750 ml actually come?

Then you need to figure out what an acceptable margin of error is. + or - 1 ml? 2 ml? 10 ml?

Given discrepancies in your bottles (whatever that turns out to be) how much liquid will you need to put in them to ensure that they have at least that much in them? For example (pulling numbers out of my ass here), if a mark 2 cm down on the neck has a 5 ml difference between bottles, you'll need to add at least 755 ml to make sure all of them get 750 ml (if that is your goal). Or not, if an acceptable margin of error is 10 ml.

Then devise the best way to get that for the size of operation you are running. You will need to figure out what the error is in this method, too. If it is say +/- 1%, and you again need to get AT LEAST 750 ml beer per bottle, you will again need to overfill by a little (~7.5 ml) to make sure that each bottle gets the minimum amount.

Or something like that. My head is starting to hurt... It really depends on what your goals are. IIRC, you are looking to go pro? Which makes me think you might need a bottling plant. Seems to me microbreweries start out with just kegs for this reason!

I have solved the bottle problem. I now have all of the same bottles. They will all be the same.
My only concern left is when you are putting the fermtech bottle filler one will have it depressed thus the scale will have added weight applied to it. I am not sure if it is a major point ( i dont think so) but im not sure.
It may go into my +/- margin that you spoke of.
Anyways thanks for the detailed numbers that was most helpful!
 
I have solved the bottle problem. I now have all of the same bottles. They will all be the same.
My only concern left is when you are putting the fermtech bottle filler one will have it depressed thus the scale will have added weight applied to it. I am not sure if it is a major point ( i dont think so) but im not sure.
It may go into my +/- margin that you spoke of.
Anyways thanks for the detailed numbers that was most helpful!

Even bottles manufactured in the same batch will have a variation in the mass. It could be as high 5 to 10g between bottles which could make a significant difference over 25 bottles. It would be best to tare each bottle before filling if you want to be precise.

Pushing down on the scale shouldn't be a huge deal, but that depends on your scale. It's probably best to lift the bottle against the filler instead of depressing the filler into the bottle. On some scales if you max out the mass limit it can throw off your initial tare weight quite a bit.
 
Put bottle on scale and tare.

Have a solenoid value open and start filling the bottle.
^
|
Insert magic black box in here*
|
V
When the correct mass has been arrived at, send a signal to the solenoid to close.

Repeat.

* I don't know how to do that, but I'm sure it would be possible with a modern scale with some form of computer output.
 
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