Making Bottling Less Painful

Been brewing for a couple of months so far, and have had great results. Already having a kegerator, I jumped directly into kegging just for the simplicity of it, but now the itch to be able to have travel beer more readily available beer for tailgating, trips to the lake, ect. has hit, so I am figuring that bottling at least some is in order. The bottling process is easy enough, just looking for some tips to speed up the process to make it more appealing. I've got a few flip tops, but given the expense for these I'm primarily stocking up on 22oz SNPA and similar bottles. Any other tips you can offer?

What kind of capper are you using? My wife bought me a bench capper. Way easier than the two-handed type. Highly recommend!

cheap beer gun. This rocks cause you can drink stright from the bottle without clearing a room

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/we-no-need-no-stinking-beer-gun-24678/

currently I just have a wing capper. The only bottling I have been doing so far is at most 2 or 3 flip tops if my batch was a bit over the capacity of my kegs, so it hasn't been an issue. Am I correct in assuming that having uniformly sized bottles is the only way to go if using a bench capper to avoid continual adjustments?

ekjohns said:

cheap beer gun. This rocks cause you can drink stright from the bottle without clearing a room

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/we-no-need-no-stinking-beer-gun-24678/

Click to expand...

What sort of shelf life do you get when going this route vs natural carbonation? I mainly want to have a couple of cases on hand at any given time to be able to grab and go. I've been filling growlers for traveling, which is OK, but most of the time when I am traveling it is to the lake on a Friday after work, and the extra time this takes is a deal breaker.

Filling a growler takes like 2 minutes? Am I missing something?

autobaun70 said:

What sort of shelf life do you get when going this route vs natural carbonation? I mainly want to have a couple of cases on hand at any given time to be able to grab and go. I've been filling growlers for traveling, which is OK, but most of the time when I am traveling it is to the lake on a Friday after work, and the extra time this takes is a deal breaker.

Click to expand...

I use the same method and don't have any bottles that I have been storing, but what I love is the ability to get the carb exactly where I want it, then bottle it as is. With yeast and bottling sugar, I always felt it was a crap shoot as to whether or not it would be right.

I still bottled my barleywine with yeast and priming sugar since I'm planning on saving several for a few years...

Special Hops said:

Filling a growler takes like 2 minutes? Am I missing something?

Click to expand...

Filling 5 or 6 for an entire weekend takes a bit too long though, When I leave work on Friday's it's typically after 6 when I get home, and another hour and a half to the lake. Lake time is something that can't be interfered with for any reason.....

so bottle the night before and put the growlers in the fridge,

get off work, grab cold growlers, head off to the lake?

-=jason=-

Flomaster said:

so bottle the night before and put the growlers in the fridge,

get off work, grab cold growlers, head off to the lake?

-=jason=-

Click to expand...

I've done that once, and it improved the timing a bit, but a 1/2 gallon jug of beer is less than ideal on a boat. I normally drink from a glass, but on a boat with the vibration and wind, beer gets really flat really quick when in a glass, so a can or bottle is pretty much a must.

Just figured this one out last night when I was making up a couple of bombers of my latest to take to a dinner party and noticed I was low on caps..

ALSO - It's nearly beach/boat time, and I was thinking I would carry around growlers (I already made the WNNNSBG)


I fished out some PET bottles from a Mr Beer kit years ago and they work awesome, the caps are reusable and they're only about a buck each at Northern Brewer

Call it blasphemy if you will, but give it a shot !! Just reuse a 20oz soda bottle and sit by the pool and sip a homebrew.... THEN tell me I'm crazy !!!!

if you are looking for a weekend get away brew, have you considered the 3 gallon ball lock kegs with a 20oz paint ball CO2 charge. Keg it, pressure it with your regular system then travel with the little one. It fits in a 48 cooler just fine with room for food for the weekend.

2 liter PET bottles and carbonator caps:

http://www.midwestsupplies.com/the-carbonater.html

You can also make your own DIY carbonator caps if you are so inclined.

Carbonator caps are way too much $ !!! Just try beer in a 1 liter bottle with a regular cap and the plans for a WNNNSBG ( basically a racking cane cut short, a rubber stopper, and a picnic tap ~$6 total). I think you'll be pleased with the results!

ekjohns said:

cheap beer gun. This rocks cause you can drink stright from the bottle without clearing a room

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/we-no-need-no-stinking-beer-gun-24678/

Click to expand...

By clearing a room, you mean awful farts from drinking the yeast?

I made such a big deal about not drinking from the bottle when I first started brewing, and most of the other guys just didn't care that I had "heard" it could cause stomach upset and other gastrointestinal troubles. It became a running joke that if you drank homebrew from the bottle, corn would grow in your stomach. Not a single one of us has had problems.

Also, I have made carbonator caps and they work great. Buy a pack of air valves, or threaded shrader valves and you are set. Used an old paintball gun 20oz co2 container to force carb homemade rootbeer.

yeah i mean farting. I drank a few brews out of the bottle once and it made me gassy. Not to mention the last few sips would be conc. yeast. I know people do it but it just isnt for me.

As far as shelf life if you read that thread people are taking their bottles out several months with no loss in carbination

here's a great bottling thread:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/bottling-tips-homebrewer-94812/

and the thread posted earlier about 'we don't need no stinkin beer gun' is great also.

You can also bottle directly out of the tap (picnic or otherwise). The trick is to chill the bottles (preferably in a freezer compartment), reduce the keg pressure to a minimum, tilt the bottle as you fill it slowly letting the beer flow down the wall of the bottle. I've even done this with competition entries more than a few times with excellent results. Did it last year for the nationals and won a 1st place with it in the first round.

I still prefer the carbonator caps & 2 liter PET bottles for casual transporting locally.

Been through all of my various fittings, tubing, ect. to get an inventory of what I would need to do the beiemuncher gun, and have done a bit of thinking about this. My thought is to just use a long piece of beer line, maybe even 20' long if need be, to slow down the flow so that I could just disconnect the line going to the fridge faucet and attach to the homemade faucet assembly. I have a pressurized cleaning system already, so cleaning out the line and sanitizing it is no problem at all.

autobaun70 said:

Been through all of my various fittings, tubing, ect. to get an inventory of what I would need to do the beiemuncher gun, and have done a bit of thinking about this. My thought is to just use a long piece of beer line, maybe even 20' long if need be, to slow down the flow so that I could just disconnect the line going to the fridge faucet and attach to the homemade faucet assembly. I have a pressurized cleaning system already, so cleaning out the line and sanitizing it is no problem at all.

Click to expand...

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/bottling-wand-perlick-owners-228344/

this thread is full of WIN



-=Jason=-