Do I need to bottle all at once?

[drycreek]

My first batch is in the middle of secondary fermentation and I was hoping to bottle by the end of this week. The problem is that I don't have nearly enough bottles, and local alcohol laws prevent me from obtaining bottles from either bars or liquor stores. This had been my plan all along, and I suddenly found out that it won't work, so now I'm stuck with no bottles except those I had saved from my own consumption.

So the question is, would it be a terrible idea to bottle half the beer and leave the rest in the carboy until I acquire more bottles over the next couple weeks? I'm assuming the first half will be fine, but I'm curious if opening the carboy and siphoning some off will have any negative effects on the 2nd half that I bottle later.

This seems like a silly problem to have.

 

[ChshreCat]

You would be better off just leaving it in the carboy until you collect enough bottles. It'll actually make the beer BETTER to leave it in there longer, anyway. Call your friends and see if they can chip in. If you have a few friends who drink stuff that comes in pry-off bottles, you can collect enough in no time.

 

[Gremlyn]

You would be better off just leaving it in the carboy until you collect enough bottles. It'll actually make the beer BETTER to leave it in there longer, anyway. Call your friends and see if they can chip in. If you have a few friends who drink stuff that comes in pry-off bottles, you can collect enough in no time.

+1 It's not a really good idea to bottle 1/2 and put the rest back unless you can rack a portion of it to a small carboy.

 

[SMOKEU]

WTF is up with the laws in your country? First they tell you that it's illegal to distill spirits, now they say it's illegal to get empty bottles from pubs.

 

[scrambledegg81]

Oh just read up about the 3-tier system of alcohol distribution here, smokeu. You'll have a right hoot.

 

[Heineken]

I lived in Texas for 11 years and the local laws are very different. Many of the counties are dry counties where you can't buy any alcohol. Others you can only buy beer or wine and then some you can buy anything. I didn't know when I moved to Texas and moved to a dry county. Had to go to the next county to get any alcohol before they changed the law. This was a huge shock to me as the state I moved from, Indiana, was not set up like this at all. Only problem with Indiana is you couldn't buy anything on Sunday so you had to prepare ahead of football games.

 

[Revvy]

All bitching about local laws aside, and back to the topic at hand. Just hold off on bottling till you get enough bottles. Don't split the batch. Your wont harm your beer leaving it in secondary, this is a game of patience, the more you do stuff like that, actually the better your beer will be. So drink up til you have enough.....

Do you have a local recycling center? See if you can grab some bottles from there...

 

[bonzombiekitty]

I'd just hold off as well. The empty space in your carboy is probably all CO2. The beer you remove from the carboy is going to be replaced with air (O2) and since your fermenting is probably all done, not much of that air is going to be pushed out of the carboy when you reseal it. That's going to increase the chances of making the beer go bad.

To get enough bottles what you need to do is just go out and buy a case or two of good beer. Then have a party and drink 'em all.

 

[drycreek]

Revvy, you are a winner. Not sure why I didn't think of a recycling center, but it worked out. Got the bottles in hand, but I still need to clean them and stuff so I might wait a bit longer before bottling.

 

[Heineken]

Do you have a local recycling center? See if you can grab some bottles from there...

I did this when I first started, went to our local dump and pulled some bottles out of the glass recycling container. However, couldn't go through with it. Even as much as I like Oxyclean, it didn't seem sanitary enough to pull bottles out of the trash. Especially after seeing a few cig butts in the bottle.