bottling timetable

[joebou4860]

The wife and kid are out for the weekend. My first batch is ready to bottle. So I was wondering how long does the process take. You see, cause the plan is to bottle the first batch, clean up and start a new batch. Is this do-able in the span of a lazy saturday?

 

[trinitone]

If you plan ahead and don't run into any "situations" then it really shouldn't take very long at all.

 

[tired]

If you are bottling by yourself, I find that it takes me about 1 1/2 to 2 hours from set up to clean up. If you have a friend or two helping you (and not drinking all the beer that you have in the fridge), the job is much quicker and way more fun (since you don't have to do all the sterilizing).

 

[Fiery Sword]

I always find that Beer Saturdays or Beer Sundays take much longer than anticipated. I'd say an entire 5-gallon bottling would take me 3 hours alone. The bulk of that time is washing, sanitizing and drying the bottles - as well as general cleanup. Doing an extract (assumed, correct me if i'm wrong!) wort would probably take me another 3-4 hours soup to nuts. Again, it's the prep and cleaning that drags out!

But yes, it is completely achievable. Last weekend my brother and I disassembled/cleanind 3 kegs, prepped 5gal worth of bottles, beer-lines the kegerator, then kegged about 10 gallone, bottled about 5 gallons and cleaned up - with the both of us it still took about 8-10 hours!!!!

 

[fifelee]

It is doable, but I found a routine and knowing what to expect is everything too speeding up the process. Being this is your first batch you don’t yet have the routine down. I think I went to the homebrew store and Homedepot three times during my first bottling session. First I wanted a no-rinse sanitize, then I decide to get a wallpaper tray to soak my siphon in, and then I decided to buy a storage bin to soak bottles in (and us for storage). Plan ahead a little tonight and you should be fine…that is unless you drink too may beers.

 

[zoebisch01]

One way of really cutting down time in the bottling process is to run the dishwasher (if you have one capable) on sanitize the night before and then just leave them sit with the door closed. Everyone does it differently. It takes me onlyabout 10 - 15 minutes to siphon the beer, and about 2 - 3 minutes to cap using a super-agata (man that thing is great). Cleanup is about 30 minutes.

 

[joebou4860]

Can I just put the sanitizer instead of soap?

 

[tired]

It is doable, but I found a routine and knowing what to expect is everything too speeding up the process. Being this is your first batch you don’t yet have the routine down.

Yes, plan where and how and where you are going to do each step, and have a few old towels/rags ready for a quick clean-up (you will be mopping in the end). This will save a lot of time.

Also, make sure that you have a place where you can hang your tubes from after you sanitize them so that the parts that touch the beer do not touch anything that isn't sterile.

 

[Yooper]

You've just hit on a kind of hot topic around here. Some use dishwasher, some don't. Some say they work great, others say that due to the shape of the bottles, the water doesn't always go into each bottle so it won't be sanitized. Feel free do do a search using the words "sanitize" and "dishwasher".

I used to soak my bottles in one-step and air dry. Now, I borrow my friends bottling tree and this little "squirter thing". It's amazingly fast! But, there is no one "right way" to do this. It is agreed, though, that the bottles must be clean and sanitized.

Lorena

 

[Bobby_M]

I always wondered about putting sanitizer in and running the system. I am not confident that water alone gets hot enough but I am pretty certain that the tub gets drained before a rinse cycle and this is a NO-RINSE sanitizer. I simply use my dishwashing rack as a dip dry. If I could remember to stop the cycle right before the rinse, maybe it would work.

The other thing you can do is bottle and brew at the same time to make use of a batch of sanitizer. I usually throw my kettle on the flame and start getting my bottling gear together. I throw the steeping grains in and set my 30min timer and start sanitizing the bottling bucket and bottles and boil my priming sugar. Then go flame on the wort to a boil while I rack my bottling brew.

There's a lot of wating around during a boil so I bottle in between those steps with my timer to keep me on schedule. There are no real critical time-crunch steps to bottling except for maybe not leaving too many filled bottles uncapped for a length of time.

I usually finish bottling a batch by the time I'm ready to flame out on the new brew and that includes moving my saniting solution into the waiting primary. Individually these would be about an hour and a half each, but combine to only about 1.5 to 2 hours.

 

[cweston]

A few tips:

A big rubbermaid tub in which you can sanitze, say 30 bottles or more, helps a great deal. You use more sanitizer that way, but it's worth it.

The dishwasher is a great drying rack: take the bottles out of the sanitizer and put them upside down in the dishwaher.

The door of the dishwasher is a great work surface--you're right there wehere the bottle are, spills are not a big deal.

It is much easier as a two person job. My sons usually help me.

 

[ColoradoXJ13]

I sanitized my bottles ahead of time (sterilized actually) in the oven @ 350*F for 1.5 hours, put a little aluminum foil on top of each one, and put them in cases. Made for a really quick (~1 hour) bottling process for me with a friend doing the capping.

 

[zoebisch01]

Can I just put the sanitizer instead of soap?

You don't need to add anything. Basically you wash your bottles by hand as normal, but the day before brewing set your dishwasher to the 'sanitize' cycle. By definition they are certified to reach and hold the appropriate temperature. It gets hot and holds it. Some people use an oven. What should be understood is that it is not necessarily the water itself but the overall holding temperature of the dishwasher. If you open it (although I can hardly recommend it) just at that point, it is very hot. Adding a no-rinse sanitizer probably wouldn't hurt anything, but I don't think you gain anything as it is not necessary. That water comes cascading down the bottles and basically everything else. It is not important that it actually enters the bottle. It will get hot enough.

[edit]before somebody calls me on this....I suppose it is possibly if you had a huge chunk of mold in one it might survive, but even this scenario is highly unlikely. Most stuff is dead in a very short time period from being exposed to a high enough temperature. The only thing I can think of that can actually survive is botulism and I don't think there has ever been a reported case of botulism in beer? And not only that, with botulism you are concerned about the ingredients themselves, not leftover stuff from an old bottle...unless of course you filled it with dirt or something[/ediit]

 

[SOB]

Hot Water Sanitization:
Sanitize by immersion in hot water maintained at 171°F or higher by means of an approved heating device.

Just so ya know...

 

[Cheesefood]

Here's my bottling method:

Fill your bottling bucket up with water and StarSan or Iodaphor (use appropriate amounts). Hook up the hose and bottling wand.

Over your open dishwasher door, start filling your bottles with the disinfectant in your bucket. If you start to run out of liquid (and you might), dump the water from the first bottles back into the bucket and put them upside-down on the dishwasher rack to dry. When you're done, empty out the bottles into the sink (FIFO method) and put on the dishwasher rack. Don't forget to turn off the bucket valve when you're done.

Then rack from 2ndary to bucket, then go upstairs and fill your bottles. Takes a little while, but you know that your hose and wand will be sanitary.

Always fill over your dishwasher door. Set a chair, crank some tunes, and drink a couple cold ones during the process.

 

[SOB]

What if your dishwasher rack isn't exactly sanatized? Aren't you introducing germs into your bottles after they have been sanatized?

 

[cweston]

What if your dishwasher rack isn't exactly sanatized? Aren't you introducing germs into your bottles after they have been sanatized?

I usually run the dishwasher shortly before bottling. I don't worry much about it: the dishwasher gets run at least once a day in my household: it's got to be cleaner then just about anywhere else I'd put the bottles while waiting to fill them. (I make sure it hasn't had dirty dishes put int it in the meantime, of course.)

 

[RichBrewer]

You've just hit on a kind of hot topic around here. Some use dishwasher, some don't. Some say they work great, others say that due to the shape of the bottles, the water doesn't always go into each bottle so it won't be sanitized. Feel free do do a search using the words "sanitize" and "dishwasher".

Lorena

When I used to bottle I always used the dishwasher to sanitize them. I didn't use soap and I wasn't concerned with water getting into the bottles. I just wanted the heat from the wash,rinse, and dry cycles to sanitize the bottles.

 

[Rodanrodanadana]

I just bottled my first batch and it took me about two hours, from getting everything ready, mixing in the priming sugar, through bottling and then clean up. My bottles were already pre-cleaned. I used a pump spray sanitizer thingy, that Lorena mentioned, with StarSan and hung the bottles on a tree. I don't have a bottling bucket with a spigot, so I used a siphon with a wine style bottle filler attachment to fill each bottle. I placed a sanitized cap on each one after filling. Once all the bottles were filled, I used a bench capper to put the caps on tight. Put the bottles away and washed up.

I will be quicker next time, but I can't see getting it under an hour.

The more large size bottles you use the less time it takes. I need more bigger bottles