First Bottling Today -- Thoughts

[kyoun1e]

Well, I waited almost three weeks to bottle and had been targeting this week to get it done. Some thoughts:

1. Final Gravity: Was worried about this. Recipe kit said final gravity should be 1.014 and...I NAILED IT! Very happy about this! Initial gravity came in a bit low at 1.052 so this may have less ABV vs. what the kit indicated. Anyways, this reading gave me some confidence.

As stated in another thread, the recipe said the original gravity should be 1.060. I read 1.052 (although I could have read it wrong). Any idea what would cause the lower reading?

2. Taste: Took the sample for the gravity reading and smelt and drank it. Tasted in the ballpark! Another positive sign. Didn't taste like absolute crud and it was clear this was an IPA.

3. Sanitizing: There has to be another way. I think this part of my process is either loose or maybe this just is what it is. It didn't help that I needed to take minutes at a time to deal with my boss on emails and such. But this is what I did:

* Dunked all 48 bottles into a tub of oxyclean solution the night before.
* Prior to bottling, would take 2 bottles out at a time, rinse out in the sink, then squirt starsan solution via vinator, dunk the neck in sanstar, and then put both bottles on the bottle tree. Repeat 24 times. I was interrupted frequently by work, but I could swear that this alone took an hour.

Any way to improve this process?

Other than that, sanitizing the equipment and the bottling bucket didn't seem too bad.

4. Priming Sugar: Boiled two cups of water, dumped the sugar in, took off heat, stirred till dissolved, then boiled for another minute just to be sure the sugar was sanitized.

5. Siphoning: Didn't feel like I got too much crud in the bottling bucket. May have left a half a beer on the table. No biggie. Almost forgot to put the damn sugar in there!

6. Bottling: Attaching the bottling want to the spigot worked like a charm. I also elevated the bottling bucket on top of another bucket so I wasn't bending over all the time.

Capping was fine with the bench capper but the issue of the bottle sticking to the capper was annoying (despite rubbing olive oil on it) and I kept thinking that I'd tear the cap off the bottle when it was stuck. I turned the bottle another 180 degrees and pressed down again but I never felt that was needed. I also grabbed the bottle by the cap and tugged a little each time to make sure it was on. Seemed on to me.

7. Volume: 5 gallon batched indicated I'd end up with 2 cases. In the end I had 44 bottles + one that was from the very bottle of the bucket -- I figure I'll drink that myself in another week to give me a "preview" of what's coming. 44 sound right?

8. Consumption: What do you think in terms of waiting to crack these open? Another 2 weeks?

Anyways, I'm feeling good about this. I know I've asked a lot of questions and you all clearly helped me quite a bit.

If you have any thoughts on process improvements I'm all ears.

Thanks!

 

[passedpawn]

If you're bottling, you MUST have a vinator and bottling tree. This will make saniting just before bottling a breeze. Caps go into the vinator reservoir for sanitizing.

Pro-tip: add another spigot/wand to your bottling bucket - Double-Barrel Bottling: Now, Twice as Fast!

Make sure to do a quick sink rinse within a couple of hours after emptying a bottle. That's all you should have to do to bottles of homebrew.

 

[kyoun1e]

If you're bottling, you MUST have a vinator and bottling tree. This will make saniting just before bottling a breeze. Caps go into the vinator reservoir for sanitizing.

Pro-tip: add another spigot/wand to your bottling bucket - Double-Barrel Bottling: Now, Twice as Fast!

Make sure to do a quick sink rinse within a couple of hours after emptying a bottle. That's all you should have to do to bottles of homebrew.

Yup. Have both the vinator and bottle tree. I did a couple squirts of the vinator, dunk the neck in starsan, then stick it on the bottle tree.

Feel like maybe I'm over doing it on the bottle cleaning. Did I need to oxyclean the heck out of them the night before? Just feel like going over to the sink to rinse out the bottles then vinator them took longer than expected. This part of the process took MUCH longer than expected while getting the beer in and capping took much LESS time than expected. Was surprised.

 

[kyoun1e]

Quick Question: What's the ideal temperature once you have the beer in the bottles?

My basement is stable between 62-66 degrees. Fine? If not, I could move.

Thanks

 

[C-Rider]

Try this:

3. Sanitizing:[/B] There has to be another way. I think this part of my process is either loose or maybe this just is what it is. It didn't help that I needed to take minutes at a time to deal with my boss on emails and such. But this is what I did:

* Dunked all 48 bottles into a tub of oxyclean solution the night before.
*You could Dunked all 48 bottles into a tub starsan the night before and not worry about rinsing them. Just pull out, empty and fill.

!

 

[passedpawn]

Quick Question: What's the ideal temperature once you have the beer in the bottles?

My basement is stable between 62-66 degrees. Fine? If not, I could move.

Thanks

Over 70F. Carbonation seemed to take forever at any temperature below that. I don't know why, since it fermented fine at lower than 70.

 

[madscientist451]

Process looks ok, the only things I do differently is that I visually inspect each bottle by holding it up to a light source and look through the neck of the bottle to see if there is any buildup of crud on the bottom. Any cruddy bottles are set aside or thrown out. To get crud off, mix up some PBW and let it sit in the bottles for 24 hrs or so, then use a bottle brush and rinse. If whatever is in there doesn't come out easily, I toss the bottle.
At bottling time, I have 2.5 gallon bucket with enough star-san to submerge the bottles, I usually put about 10 in at a time. Take a bottle out, dump the star-san, fill with beer and cap.

 

[Griffin495]

Sounds like you had a pretty successful bottling day. Good job.

They always say you'll get about 2 cases of beer from a 5 gallon batch, but it doesn't usually happen. I've done all size batches from 1 gallon to 2 to 3 to 5 and in my experience, I generally get about 9 gallons a bottle. So 44 sounds about right. That will also depend on how many hydrometer samples you took.

 

[kyoun1e]

Try this:

Ugh. Really? I thought you had to 1) Clean, and then 2) Sanitize?

I guess in this situation, these bottles being new and all, maybe I didn't need to do the oxyclean since the bottles were brand new? If I'm re-using bottles I'd think I'd have to bury them in oxyclean first THEN the night before bottling I could do the starsan dunk...sound right?

 

[kyoun1e]

Over 70F. Carbonation seemed to take forever at any temperature below that. I don't know why, since it fermented fine at lower than 70.

Good to know.

My house has central AC so always pretty cool. May need to drape a blanket around them or something.

 

[C-Rider]

Ugh. Really? I thought you had to 1) Clean, and then 2) Sanitize?

I guess in this situation, these bottles being new and all, maybe I didn't need to do the oxyclean since the bottles were brand new? If I'm re-using bottles I'd think I'd have to bury them in oxyclean first THEN the night before bottling I could do the starsan dunk...sound right?

I clean them right after use. the store. Check out this video:

 

[kyoun1e]

I clean them right after use. the store. Check out this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5oIhI2XLZY

Hmmm. I notice that when this guy rinses out the bottle after the oxyclean he rinses quite a bit. Thats something I didn't really do. I took the soaked bottle that was sitting in oxy, dumped that out, then maybe filled the bottle halfway with water, and rinsed once. Then I dunked that in the starsan vinator.

Hope that's enough!

 

[ncbrewer]

Well, I waited almost three weeks to bottle and had been targeting this week to get it done. Some thoughts:

1. Final Gravity: Was worried about this. Recipe kit said final gravity should be 1.014 and...I NAILED IT! Very happy about this! Initial gravity came in a bit low at 1.052 so this may have less ABV vs. what the kit indicated. Anyways, this reading gave me some confidence.

As stated in another thread, the recipe said the original gravity should be 1.060. I read 1.052 (although I could have read it wrong). Any idea what would cause the lower reading?
>>>If this was an extract batch, the OG will come out right as long as you used all the extract/steeping grains and total volume was correct. There could be a volume measuring error or a hydrometer reading error.

4. Priming Sugar:[/B] Boiled two cups of water, dumped the sugar in, took off heat, stirred till dissolved, then boiled for another minute just to be sure the sugar was sanitized.
>>>I take the priming pan of water off the burner and wait one minute before adding the sugar to be sure the sugar won't scorch. (Maybe you used a microwave - then ok)

Capping was fine with the bench capper but the issue of the bottle sticking to the capper was annoying (despite rubbing olive oil on it) and I kept thinking that I'd tear the cap off the bottle when it was stuck. I turned the bottle another 180 degrees and pressed down again but I never felt that was needed. I also grabbed the bottle by the cap and tugged a little each time to make sure it was on. Seemed on to me.
>>>I've had two issues with a bench capper. One was when I decided that if a little force is good, a lot is better. This resulted in crushed cap seats and poor sealing. The second problem was bottles sticking in the capper bell a little. I started lubing the bell before each case - problem solved.

I hope this helps.

 

[ca_baracus]

This is what I did for the batch I bottled recently: the night before, I loaded all of my bottles in the bottom rack of my dishwasher and did a normal wash with the sanitize option selected.

When it came time to bottle, I dunked and soaked the bottles in buckets of StarSan solution for a few minutes. Filled up a squirt bottle with the StarSan solution and sprayed down the bottom dishwasher rack. After the bottles soaked, I put them back on the now sanitized dishwasher rack, put my bottling bucket above the dishwasher in the counter, and pulled off a six pack at time to bottle and cap. Sort of laborious but I had fun with it!

 

[Brownalemikie]

Ugh. Really? I thought you had to 1) Clean, and then 2) Sanitize?

I guess in this situation, these bottles being new and all, maybe I didn't need to do the oxyclean since the bottles were brand new? If I'm re-using bottles I'd think I'd have to bury them in oxyclean first THEN the night before bottling I could do the starsan dunk...sound right?

Maybe you're making too much work for yourself......I have about 150 bottles (12 oz brown) and have re-used each of them at least 15 times and have never used Oxiclean on them.

I simply rinse them twice right after pouring the beer into a glass, then store them until my next bottling session. Then I simply submerse the bottles in Starsan solution and drain them. Then I fill them with beer and cap. Pretty simple eh?

 

[kyoun1e]

Maybe you're making too much work for yourself......I have about 150 bottles (12 oz brown) and have re-used each of them at least 15 times and have never used Oxiclean on them.

I simply rinse them twice right after pouring the beer into a glass, then store them until my next bottling session. Then I simply submerse the bottles in Starsan solution and drain them. Then I fill them with beer and cap. Pretty simple eh?

Sounds like I am over doing it.

Was determined to go the route of "better safe than sorry" on this first effort though.

 

[C-Rider]

Maybe you're making too much work for yourself......I have about 150 bottles (12 oz brown) and have re-used each of them at least 15 times and have never used Oxiclean on them.

I simply rinse them twice right after pouring the beer into a glass, then store them until my next bottling session. Then I simply submerse the bottles in Starsan solution and drain them. Then I fill them with beer and cap. Pretty simple eh?

Since I rinse them out right after use...the only reason I soak in OxyClean is to remove the labels

 

[Brownalemikie]

I should add that I always hold the bottle up to light and look thru it after rinsing to make sure all the sediment is removed from the bottom.

 

[65C]

Sanitizing - I oxy when they first used with labels etc. - after that I rinse straight after opening and starsan before I use - seems to work fine

Taste - if it tastes good at bottling I find it tastes 10X after a few weeks, if it tastes bad at bottling it tastes 5X after a few weeks

Volume - if they are 500ml bottles - that sounds really good - I think 44 is my max - I usually drink a pint while I'm bottling

Siphoning - I get almost to end then I take it out, and pour the rest through a sieve squeezing the hops - it works well so far and get an extra 2L

Consumption - I still don't understand this bit - I have 3 day old which is fully carbed like a Guiness (literally) and one from 3 weeks ago with no carb - I am finding using the solution rather than putting sugar direct in bottle is working out better

when I started brewing I found making a *lot* initially gave me a buffer after a couple of months - so I can now let it mature properly - I had 200+ bottles saved up which helped