Bottling by yourself... how do you do it?

[gingerdawg]

Do like this, only have the bottling bucket on the counter, above the open dishwasher door to catch the drips. Double bottling - FTW

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/double-barrel-bottling-now-twice-fast-257264/

 

[DPBISME]

Try moving only the bottle, and never anything else. Speeds things up even quicker when the hose & wand just hangs in mid-air and all you need to do is lift the bottle up into it.

I find that that is too much movement...

Push down, Fill up, Pull out, and Repeat.

Then I lift the whole case to a table and cap the whole thing.

Then go back and do the next case.

When I am all done I like to rinse off the bottles in place. and let them dry...

I just pick up fresh boxes at the Total Wine each time I go in...

I did see some noce "Plastic Cases" that I was thinking about buying but for right now this works...

 

[bobbrews]

You're never pushing down.

You're lifting the bottle into the wand to fill it up, then you quickly pull out and cap.

 

[truekey]

I haven't had any spills or issues since all the suggestions above.


Just thought I'd note since I do smaller batches of 1-3 gallons that I don't soak my bottles in sanitizer. It seems faster and more efficient to simply spray the inside of the bottle with star San. I do about four or five sprays and make sure the bottle is covered by spinning it in my hand once. Likewise with caps, I put them in a bowl and spray them. I save a lot of star san this way.

 

[bobbrews]

It's even faster to rinse your bottles after each use, let them drain in your dish rack, and then store them upside down in their original containers in a closet. This gives you an array of clean, but not sanitized bottles to work with for a future bottling day. So an hour before you wish to bottle, stack your clean bottles upside down in the dishwasher, and run a cycle (without soap). No StarSan required and afterward you have fully sanitized bottles ready for filling. The only downside is that after the cycle, you have leave the dishwasher door open and wait about 10 minutes for the bottles to cool down a bit before filling.

 

[MMJfan]

Do like this, only have the bottling bucket on the counter, above the open dishwasher door to catch the drips. Double bottling - FTW

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/double-barrel-bottling-now-twice-fast-257264/

I don't do double barrel bottling, but I do place my bottling bucket on the counter above my open dishwasher.

It's even faster to rinse your bottles after each use, let them drain in your dish rack, and then store them upside down in their original containers in a closet. This gives you an array of clean, but not sanitized bottles to work with for a future bottling day. So an hour before you wish to bottle, stack your clean bottles upside down in the dishwasher, and run a cycle (without soap). No StarSan required and afterward you have fully sanitized bottles ready for filling. The only downside is that after the cycle, you have leave the dishwasher door open and wait about 10 minutes for the bottles to cool down a bit before filling.

This! I do this as well. I have a sanitize cycle on my dishwasher that I use. And then when I'm bottling using the method described above, I just pull the bottles out of the dishwasher as I go! Works great!

 

[Mtdesh]

I use a bottling bucket with filling wand. Bucket on counter. I put all empty bottles in milk crates and fill them right in the crate, while sitting on an empty crate. When all bottles are full I bring one crate at a time up to counter for capping.

 

[Calichusetts]

I fill my bucket with sanitizer, then use it to fill the bottles...add the bottling wand then dump the sanitizer back into my star san bucket as I go...cap as I go as well.