My first bottling

[Shred]

So, I got my first brew into bottles last week. There were some less-than-pleasant surprises along the way, however.

I have all the gory details in my blog (as always, shoutouts given back to these forums), but here's a snippet:

I've never used a bottle capper before, so I figured I'd test this red contraption out. At a glance it seems simple enough. Place the cap on the magnet in the capper, place the capper on the bottle, squeeze. Yeah... that's how it's supposed to work. I spent 15 minutes without a single success before turning to internet videos for help. They, of course, showed exactly what I was doing.

I'm pretty sure I invented some new swear words. Now I've got 5 gallons of beer that won't make it into a bottle because I don't possess the necessary coordination to cap... wait, what's this brass thing?

Hmm... it has a jagged piece of red plastic on it. That's the same color red as the cap... Damn it! It's broken! (The company who sold us this kit will be receiving a not-so-nice email).

I hope this blog post helps others from dealing with the same headaches!

 

[mammothkraken]

Yeah...cap on the bottle then capper on that usually works best.

Also check craigslist for bottlecappers and try to get yourself a bench bottle capper for cheap. I got mine for $5 best bottling purchase ever...besides bottle tree and avinator.

Also, although some people swear by it, I wouldn't use your dishwasher to sanitize. Just get some starsan. Mix up a 5 gallon batch and reuse it forever...seriously one bottle of it will last forever.