Bottling Questions

I am about to bottle my 1st homebrew either today or tommorow and I have a couple qestions:

1. After I sanitize with start-san do I rinse out with water?
2. I do not have a bottle drying tree do they have to air dry completely or is it ok to have a moist bottle with a drop or two of water in the bottom so I can go straight from rinsing to bottling?

ctbrewer227 said:

1. After I sanitize with start-san do I rinse out with water?
2. I do not have a bottle drying tree do they have to air dry completely or is it ok to have a moist bottle with a drop or two of water in the bottom so I can go straight from rinsing to bottling?

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1. No
2. I usually clean, sanitize, then drain for an hour.

Either way, you'll have beer, the hard part is over, now comes the labor of bottling

2. I ususally run and empty the dishwasher. Then I air out my bottles on the dishwasher as I do not have a bottling tree as well.

Do I let the priming sugar cool down before adding to the priming bucket and adding the beer to it?

You should let the priming sugar cool down first.

I let mine cool in the bottling bucket before I add the beer. I usually give it a couple of minutes.

I cool it the same way I cool my wort, a quick bath in the sink then gets dumped into the bottling bucket. Doesnt take much to cool down so little though.

My clonebrew kit came with a extra light DME to use for priming sugar how much water should I boil to make the priming sugar mix?

ctbrewer227 said:

My clonebrew kit came with a extra light DME to use for priming sugar how much water should I boil to make the priming sugar mix?

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1 1/2 to 2 cups should be fine.

ctbrewer227 said:

My clonebrew kit came with a extra light DME to use for priming sugar how much water should I boil to make the priming sugar mix?

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How much DME did it come with? Usually I believe it is 1 1/4 cups of DME for 5 gallon batchs. I would use 1 1/2 cups of water.

1 1/4 cups came with it

ctbrewer227 said:

Do I let the priming sugar cool down before adding to the priming bucket and adding the beer to it?

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Perhaps I am a renegade, but I do not go out of my way to cool my priming solution. The thermal mass is quite low compared to the bucket and the 5gal batch of beer. It's not like I run from the stovetop to the bucket and rack like mad, so some cooling is happening naturally.

I let my priming solution cool while I sanitize bottles, bottling bucket, autosiphon etc..