Bottle vs Keg

[passedpawn]

Bottling isn't hard. I recommend everyone bottle for a while. It also allows you to easily share your beers, which is a nice thing.

Serving from a keg is awesome though. Having homemade beer on tap is really nice. Also, no worries about sediment at the bottom of the bottle.

 

[KeizerBrewr]

An hour? How? It takes me an hour just to sanitize 50 bottles, another 20-30 minutes to prep them with sugar, then another hour to fill. Keg takes 5 minutes to sanitize and 5 minutes to fill. Maybe you could share your process as to how you get 50 bottles sanitized, prepped, and filled in 45 minutes? It takes me that long to do a gallon.

The prep of the bottles is really where it makes the time up. I rinse my bottles immediately after pouring and then invert them in the box they came from. Then the morning(or evening) before bottling day, I toss my bottles into the dishwasher, giving them a quick peek inside as I load. Run on the Power Wash and Sanitize, Heated Dry and they're ready to go. Then when it's time to bottle, I use my boil kettle to heat up just enough water, usually 8 oz, to dissolve my corn sugar. Then chill it to below 100F and stir into my FV and bottle away. I bottled 5 gallons Thursday night in just over 45 minutes. 50 minutes including clean up of my Catalyst and bottling gear.

 

[passedpawn]

The prep of the bottles is really where it makes the time up. I rinse my bottles immediately after pouring and then invert them in the box they came from. Then the morning(or evening) before bottling day, I toss my bottles into the dishwasher, giving them a quick peek inside as I load. Run on the Power Wash and Sanitize, Heated Dry and they're ready to go. Then when it's time to bottle, I use my boil kettle to heat up just enough water, usually 8 oz, to dissolve my corn sugar. Then chill it to below 100F and stir into my FV and bottle away. I bottled 5 gallons Thursday night in just over 45 minutes. 50 minutes including clean up of my Catalyst and bottling gear.

I did the dishwasher for a while. Mine got hot enough to kill all. But it's true that the water doesn't really get up in there. I think it's far easier to just get a vinator and a bottling tree, and do your sanitizing right before you bottle. In the first pic, the vinator is on top of the bottling tree. Vinator is full of starsan solution and the caps, which are then sanitized.

And of course, you can do 2 bottles at once - if you're acrobatic like me

 

[hout17]

The prep of the bottles is really where it makes the time up. I rinse my bottles immediately after pouring and then invert them in the box they came from. Then the morning(or evening) before bottling day, I toss my bottles into the dishwasher, giving them a quick peek inside as I load. Run on the Power Wash and Sanitize, Heated Dry and they're ready to go. Then when it's time to bottle, I use my boil kettle to heat up just enough water, usually 8 oz, to dissolve my corn sugar. Then chill it to below 100F and stir into my FV and bottle away. I bottled 5 gallons Thursday night in just over 45 minutes. 50 minutes including clean up of my Catalyst and bottling gear.

I agree sanitizing is a breeze. I literally pull out clean bottles (I rinse mine thoroughly right after a pour too) and sanitize each one with the sanitizing add on that sits on top of my bottling tree. Takes me like 5 minutes to sanitize and put my bottles on the tree. Then I proceed to bottling. Easy Button.