Bottle it today

[KimmiC]

It's been around 3 weeks since the Moose Drool clone has been sitting in the primary. Full gravity reading supposed to be 1.015 and I'm close - 1.016.

Bottled it today! Tried a little taste - so far so good - tastes like beer w/out the carbonation so hopefully after I added that stuff today it will carb up. It went pretty smoothly and clean up wasn't as bad as I expected. Everything washed up great - only needed a soft sponge so no worries about scratching up the buckets.

I have the red butterfly capper - that was awesome! And I did it the way Revvy had his setup which really helped with my back. I also took everyone's advice about using the dishwasher for a bottle tree - great idea!

So now it's in a cooler (I have heard stories about bottle bombs), with a lid on it sitting on my living room floor. So another 2 weeks or so before I can try a bottle?

 

[boydster]

Nice! First batch? You'll want to try one or two before they are ready probably, and there is no shame in that. For best carbonation, give them 3 weeks @ 70F, then give them another week or so in the fridge to allow the CO2 to go back into solution for longer lasting bubbles and also to allow any chill haze to form and settle out.

 

[KimmiC]

Thanks! These are in my basement living room so temps should stay at 70 down there. Too hot up stairs on sunny day and too much sunlight upstairs. I can't wait to try one! Been saving bottles from my beers that I buy at the store. In a couple of weeks I am gonna make another batch. I will keep doing kits from my LHBS until I get better at it. I find there is more work in sanitizing everything than the actual brewing so I need to get a good system down.

 

[Hello]

Congrats! My advice regarding sanitizing is make a 5 gallon bucket of it and grab a spray bottle. Fill the spray bottle with starsan sanitizer from the 5 gal bucket. If you use a Home Depot or Lowe's bucket, you can put the lid on it and it'll be okay until you bottle. I like to dump my bucket after I bottle. Better safe than sorry. The spray bottle is great for a quick spritz of sanitizer in a bottle or on a spoon.

I think the cleaning is by far the most laborious, but necessary. I've only brewed 3 batches and find that I'm getting more efficient, I think.

 

[fosaisu]

Congrats! My advice regarding sanitizing is make a 5 gallon bucket of it and grab a spray bottle. Fill the spray bottle with starsan sanitizer from the 5 gal bucket. If you use a Home Depot or Lowe's bucket, you can put the lid on it and it'll be okay until you bottle. I like to dump my bucket after I bottle. Better safe than sorry. The spray bottle is great for a quick spritz of sanitizer in a bottle or on a spoon. I think the cleaning is by far the most laborious, but necessary. I've only brewed 3 batches and find that I'm getting more efficient, I think.

To expand on this, the sprayer is an absolute must, makes it so easy to sanitize everything thoroughly. You'll probably also find that you don't need to make a full 5 gallons of StarSan for every brew/bottling day. 1 gallon is more than enough for me, and if you go this route your bottle of StarSan concentrate will last a long time!

On the bottling end, I've had good luck following Palmer (How To Brew) and giving the bottle a good rinse (water only) immediately after drinking (so that the yeast and other gunk doesn't have time to dry in the bottom of the bottle), then skipping the scrubbing step and just sanitizing as normal before bottling. Unless you have some extra weird gunk in your bottles this seems to work well. You've read about it already if you're following Revy's work, but if you don't have one pick yourself up a vinator (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00838T4NU/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20). Makes the sanitizing step much faster and easier! I was hesitant to drop the extra $20 at first, but wouldn't want to go back to bottling without the vinator.

 

[IslandLizard]

Congrats with your new brew!

Just a word of advice.
Never bottle anything that could become a potential bottle bomb. Make that 100% certain. They are extremely dangerous. I understand you're using the cooler to contain an eventual calamity. Just in case it happens it will ruin your nice cooler. Use a cheap regular Rubbermaid tote or so, instead.

 

[SlanginDueces]

+100 on the vinator!

 

[stevehardt]

KimmiC-congrats on the first batch! You're doing awesome!

And Boyds right..you want to give them three weeks at 70 degrees, but I think almost all of us tried one sooner.

 

[KimmiC]

Yeah, I need to get a cheap cooler. And I need to read about bottle bombs. I just read horror stories but need to know why they happen....temp, too much sugar? I have had commercial brews that shot out at me when opening. I don't want to get injured or waste precious beer! I will wear safety glasses upon opening A friend of a person at work brewed his own. Went to open a bottle and it exploded. Glass went into his neck and he lost a lot of blood.

 

[JimRausch]

You'll avoid bottle bombs if you do four things:
1. Make sure your fermentation is completely finished before bottling(serial stable SGs)
2. Make sure you use the proper amount of priming sugar. There are several good on-line calculators, as well as J.P.s book.
3. Make sure you don't contaminate your beer with any weird yeast or bacteria at bottling time(some contaminants will eat the 'nonfermentables' that regular yeast won't touch and produce a lot of gas)
4. Check your bottles for cracks and flaws.
Bottle bombs are bad, but extremely rare if you take sensible precautions.

 

[MaxStout]

Ditto on making sure fermentation is complete before bottling. Just because the airlock activity has slowed down doesn't necessarily indicate complete fermentation. Take hydrometer readings, and if you get the same reading 3 days in a row, it should be ready to bottle.

Also...when you bottle, make sure the priming sugar solution is mixed well with the beer. If it isn't, the amount of sugar can vary widely from one bottle to the next. Give it a good (but gentle) stir in the bottling bucket, being careful not to splash or otherwise draw air into the beer.

Congrats on your brew! Let us know how it turns out.