51 bottles in 1hr20min.

[Gnome]

Boiled priming sugar, Sanitized bottles, racked to bottle bucket, hydro reading, filled bottles, caped, cleaned up. Started at 6:45 sat down to take notes at 8:05. Starting to get it down, got carried away and broke the top off one bottle, D**n Winged caper.

 

[redneckbeagle]

How does that time compare to breaking down and sanitizing a corny keg? I am still bottling and slowly acquiring the equipment for kegging, just curious.

 

[Gnome]

I 'm thinking kegs would be nice right now. got to be less hassle.

 

[ajf]

How does that time compare to breaking down and sanitizing a corny keg? I am still bottling and slowly acquiring the equipment for kegging, just curious.

Well, I usually don't bother to break mine down and reassemble them. This saves me less than 10 minutes.

Sanitizing takes about as much time as sanitizing a single bottle.
Oh, with the keg, you don't need to sanitize and clean a bottling bucket.

-a.

 

[rollinred]

You did one thing wrong though, you only had one person!

My buddy and I bottled my last batch in 45 min. First he started by getting the boil going for the priming sugar and getting the gear out, while I mixed up some sanatizer and started on bottles and siphon gear. I can fit 12 bottles at a time in my priming bucket and thats what I use to sanatize. By the time that all of the bottles sat for about 2 minutes I was just in time to siphon from primary to priming bucket. It only takes about 15 minutes to bottle and cap after that.

 

[Denny's Evil Concoctions]

I dump a few scoops of oxyclean in the keg, go watch tv, come back and rinse then transfer to the keg. Takes very little time.

I don't often take the fittings apary, I do put a bit of pressure in the keg and flow some oxyclean through the fittings though.

 

[stevecaaster]

takes me an hour and a half just to sanitize 2 cases of bottles...

 

[Kubed]

takes me an hour and a half just to sanitize 2 cases of bottles...

Ditto... but that's letting the dish washer do the work for me

 

[MikeInCtown]

I bottled two cases two weeks ago. Put all bottles in dishwasher night before. When it came time to bottle, I grabbed my two kids and got an assembly line going. The 4 year old grabbed bottles from the case and handed to my 7 year old. The 7 year old would add one to the sink on one side and pull a sanitized one from the other side of the sink and dump out the solution. I would grab the empty bottle and bottle 6 at a time, then cap those six.

We were done in maybe 1/2 hour. I still remeber hearing my wife talking on the phone with her friend and saying "Oh my god, the kids are bottling beer on an assembly line". LOL

 

[Funkenjaeger]

Personally, my keg routine is to clean it after it empties, rinse well, dump in some starsan, seal, shake, and put it away. Just takes a few minutes of work.

The cleaning process is to spray it out well with hot water, then add some oxiclean and water, shake and let sit a while, rinse well, then take the posts off and spray out the posts, poppets, and dip tubes with hot water and spritz with starsan before reassembling.

Then, when it's time to rack a beer in, I open the keg, give it a quick hot water rinse, dump in some more starsan, seal, shake, let sit a minute or so, flip over and let sit again upside down, then dump the starsan and rack the beer into it. Again, only a couple minutes of work.

All in all, I spend maybe 5-10 minutes of actual effort for each keg filled, maybe 20 minutes or so if you count the soak times. But, it's nice because the cleaning process is the most time consuming part, yet I can do it any time I want in advance, rather than having to do it the same day I want to keg a beer. So, the amount of time I have to spend prepping the keg on the day I actually keg a beer is like 5 minutes. Tack on the time it takes for the siphoning process, plus cleaning out the carboy/cane/tubing afterward, and that's about it.

I dump a few scoops of oxyclean in the keg, go watch tv, come back and rinse then transfer to the keg.

You don't sanitize after cleaning with oxiclean?

 

[cd2448]

I bottled two cases two weeks ago. Put all bottles in dishwasher night before. When it came time to bottle, I grabbed my two kids and got an assembly line going. The 4 year old grabbed bottles from the case and handed to my 7 year old. The 7 year old would add one to the sink on one side and pull a sanitized one from the other side of the sink and dump out the solution. I would grab the empty bottle and bottle 6 at a time, then cap those six.

We were done in maybe 1/2 hour. I still remeber hearing my wife talking on the phone with her friend and saying "Oh my god, the kids are bottling beer on an assembly line". LOL

Finally, a practical application for kids!

I still like bottles just because it's more flexible on the consumption side, but the lure of the keg is getting strong... I expect there will be kegs in the house by the end of the year.

 

[Denny's Evil Concoctions]

You don't sanitize after cleaning with oxiclean?

Oxiclean will sanitize in the right concentrations. One scoop per gallon is plenty (actually it's overkill). More than that and it starts to clump at the bottom.

Oxiclean is mostly sodium carbonate peroxyhydrate (referred to as sodium percarbonate).

One step is also sodium percarbonate.

 

[Funkenjaeger]

Oxiclean will sanitize in the right concentrations. One scoop per gallon is plenty (actually it's overkill). More than that and it starts to clump at the bottom.

Oxiclean is mostly sodium carbonate peroxyhydrate (referred to as sodium percarbonate).

One step is also sodium percarbonate.

Ah, didn't know that. However, I guess it then goes back to the old "is it okay to rinse after sanitizing" debate, since clearly oxiclean is not going to be a no-rinse sanitizer. Though I don't buy into the hype that rinsing completely negates sanitizing, I still always use no-rinse (starsan) just to be safe, but that's personal preference. Good to know that if I ever manage to run out of sanitizer, I can rely on oxiclean in a pinch

 

[Denny's Evil Concoctions]

Well One step and PBW are both Sodium Percarbonate.

If you use less then you can do the no rinse thing. I'm not a fan of the no rinse ideology.

Here's some info on Sodium Percarbonate.


Oh and MikeinCtown, in 10 or 15 years the "kids" will likely be doing asssembly line pinching and drinking of your beer.

 

[Donasay]

Ha ha ha I spent all day saturday, a full 8 hours bottling 20 gallons of stuff, I wound up doing 15 gallons of apfelwine and 5 gallons of beer, last time I bottle for a while....