So I bottled my first batch this evening, a coopers kit IPA that has been sitting in a glass Carboy for 4 weeks. Sterilized everything, syphoned to my home-made bottling bucket and added my sugar while filling up the bottling bucket, turned up the hockey game loud and began the process.
Had to rush through it a fair bit as my self built bottling bucket (neither of the local brew shops had heard of a bottling bucket) developed a leak at the spigot as it was filling.
So started filling the bottles and couldn't get it quite up to the proper level due to the foam, is it normal to have to do a second pass to fill the bottle up to a decent level or am I doing something wrong? Might be easiest to just order a proper bottling bucket online and be done with it.
One other goof, I had an empty ice cream bucket that I store all my cleaners etc in under the spigot to collect the spill off from the leak, once it filled up I dumped it back in the bucket only to realize that I hadnt sterilized it, I at least caught what I had done and separated the bottles after that in case I infected anything. I guess time will tell.
I'm hoping this process gets easier and cleaner over time, as it stands I ended up with beer all over my kitchen floor (not a first) and was only able to get 4 dozen beers out of the batch.
Had to rush through it a fair bit as my self built bottling bucket (neither of the local brew shops had heard of a bottling bucket) developed a leak at the spigot as it was filling.
So started filling the bottles and couldn't get it quite up to the proper level due to the foam, is it normal to have to do a second pass to fill the bottle up to a decent level or am I doing something wrong? Might be easiest to just order a proper bottling bucket online and be done with it.
One other goof, I had an empty ice cream bucket that I store all my cleaners etc in under the spigot to collect the spill off from the leak, once it filled up I dumped it back in the bucket only to realize that I hadnt sterilized it, I at least caught what I had done and separated the bottles after that in case I infected anything. I guess time will tell.
I'm hoping this process gets easier and cleaner over time, as it stands I ended up with beer all over my kitchen floor (not a first) and was only able to get 4 dozen beers out of the batch.