Bottling Questions

[kathomas]

Finally acquired enough empty bottles to bottle my first brew this weekend! I just have a few last minute questions:

1) I was wondering what you guys think the best way to sanitize the bottles is. Soak them in StarSan? Bake them in the oven for a while? Soak them in boiling water for a bit?

2) How is the best way to store bottles during and after bottle conditioning? Do they need to be refrigerated or is storing them at room temperature fine/desired?

Let me know, as this is the last big stress I have before the first batch is ready to drink.
Thanks,
Kate

 

[RCBIV]

I'll be bottling my third batch of beer tomorrow. Here are my tips:

1) StarSan. Any way you do it, the StarSan works really well and is quick. You can use the sanitize option on your dishwasher, but I personally didn't have success with that and it even may take longer. Less hassle, of course.

2) Put them in a cardboard box and shove them in the back of your closet. Forget about them for three weeks -- at 70 degrees (right, Revvy?). I actually like to drink the beer week-by-week, just to see how they mature. I did that with my first two batches and I'll probably do it with my third (hefeweizen). The only downside to this is you might drink three sub-par beers before they're at their prime. But if you have 50 bottles, you can spare three, right?

Here's another tip: When you bottle, make sure you have a nice, easy-to-execute set up. Empty bottles on the left, bucket of beer in front of you, place to stash the full bottles to your right. Or, opposite if you're a lefty. Whatever the method, make sure you're comfortable with it for however long you'll be sitting there.

 

[Fid]

StarSan works well. I haven't bottled for quite some time now but I actually liked the oven baking technique. I'd cover the mouth of each bottle with a piece of aluminum foil and then bake them in the oven. The one nice thing about this is that cooking them at high temps for extended periods of time actually sterilizes the bottles and they will stay sterilized as long as that foil is covering the mouth so you can sterilize your bottles well in advance. There's definitely some downsides to this though... Obviously you don't want to put your beer into glass bottles fresh from the oven so you've got to do it ahead of time and putting the foil on gets tedious.

With all of that said, if you've got a batch ready to be bottled, I think I'd go the StarSan route. If you've got a couple dozen empty bottles around, a free Sunday afternoon to waste, and your next brew is still a few weeks away from being ready to be bottled.... throw your bottles in the oven and you'll save yourself some time come bottling day.

 

[nanofreak]

StarSan and this I only pump twice, I find that the third time for some reason adds the StarSan bubbles.

 

[Ultrazord]

Soak in oxy-clean for 30 minutes, rinse, put in dish washer on sanitize. Never had a bad bottle doing this.

 

[Jayhem]

I find the simplest effective way without using your star san is this...

1. Soak bottles in bucket of oxyclean water for a an hour or overnight if you want.

2. Rinse the bottles one at a time and let them drip dry upside down for a bit

3. Place bottles in oven at 180F for 30 minutes to dry and sanitize.

4. bring bottles out of oven 10 minutes before you bottle and bottle away once they are cool enough to touch.

The biggest benefit of this method over starsan is you get to bottle clean, dry bottles, instead of slippery/wet/starsan soaked bottles.

Has worked every time for me and the hardest part is simply rinsing the bottles by hand.

 

[kindrox]

The people at my HBS say that heating the bottles up weakens them. Is this true?

 

[Varmintman]

I would not think so as long as you did not heat them up to much.

I am getting ready to bottle a batch right now. Since it was a 6 gallon batch I am using 6 ounces of sugar and have boiled 2 cups of water and dumped the sugar in and letting it cool.

Now every time I finish a beer I fill it with water and put my thumb over it and give it a good shake. Then I rinse it out. Now on bottling day I make my star san and then dunk all the bottles into it and then put them on a rack.

Rack the beer onto the sugar in my bottling bucket stir ever so careful and then bottle cap and forget for a month.

It is easy when you get a system down. Revy has written a great primer on bottling and it might help put your mind at rest if you read it.

Now I need to go and start bottling my beer

 

[david00001]

I've tried most methods, this is the process I settled on that requires the minimum possible effort and time for me. I have my bottles clean on bottling day, and:

* make two gallons of your favorite sanitizer in a five gallon bucket
* drown six bottles, when they're ready put them on your bottling tree to drain
* drown six more bottles, now you're ready to start
* fill and cap the six bottles from the tree
* when you're done with that, move the six bottles from the bucket to the tree and drown six more bottles
* repeat

That way your sanitizing as you're bottling + your hands are always getting sanitized!

 

[quick5pnt0]

Wow, a lot of complicated, or should I say over complicated methods here. Since this is your first batch all you need to do is use whatever sanitizer you've got and soak them in it for the proper amount of time. For Starsan and Iodophor that is like 2 minutes and you're ready to bottle. .

Then on your next batch you'll need to clean the bottles before sanitizing. Many guys just rinse the bottles right after using them and then sanitize but if you have any gunk built up in your bottles then by all means soak them in oxiclean the night before and then sanitize. Don't use dish detergent.