I don't bottle too often, but recent batches of specialty beers like Flanders Brown and RIS are too rare to have free flowing from a keg so I decided to bottle it all. Holy crap, I forgot how tedious this is.
First, I stopped using my bottling bucket for its intended purpose and it's now a utility bucket for grain hauling or cleanup water. No way I'd put good beer in there now. I thought about using a spare better bottle and autosiphon to bottling wand it but it would be difficult to stir in the priming solution.
My solution is to fill a sanitized keg under Co2 blanket, add priming solution, seal and shake (well, rock more than shake). What better way to make sure the priming solution is fully distributed? No oxygen exposure. Also, with a constant 2psi applied, no need to use gravity.
I got lucky and found a beer QD with a 3/8" barb on it but I suppose you could jam the bottling wand into the end of a picnic tap and achieve the same thing.
In any case, it's my new bottling bucket, period. All pros, no cons.
First, I stopped using my bottling bucket for its intended purpose and it's now a utility bucket for grain hauling or cleanup water. No way I'd put good beer in there now. I thought about using a spare better bottle and autosiphon to bottling wand it but it would be difficult to stir in the priming solution.
My solution is to fill a sanitized keg under Co2 blanket, add priming solution, seal and shake (well, rock more than shake). What better way to make sure the priming solution is fully distributed? No oxygen exposure. Also, with a constant 2psi applied, no need to use gravity.
I got lucky and found a beer QD with a 3/8" barb on it but I suppose you could jam the bottling wand into the end of a picnic tap and achieve the same thing.
In any case, it's my new bottling bucket, period. All pros, no cons.