I think bottling effectively is all about having a system and eliminating wasted motion as much as possible.
Folks above have nailed how to clean bottles by soaking. I actually wash my bottles in the diswasher. The top rack in the dishwasher allows the bottles to be inverted so the spray enters them. It works--it's the only way I clean my bottles. There might be concern over having anti-spotting compound left in the bottles which would ruin the head, but since I rinse in star-san before bottling, that's never been a problem. Pic below.
I store the now-clean bottles upside down in the
Fast Rack system.
When it is time to bottle, I use a
vinator to inject star-san up into the bottle. The unit can be made to stand alone (which is how I use it) by removing the connector that lets it be set on a bottle tree. You fill it maybe halfway with Star-San, put your bottle caps in the reservoir, and go. Push down on the inverted bottle on top of the vinator and squirt Star-San up inside the bottle.
Now, to me, this is where you can gain time. I'll rinse a bottle on the vinator, remove it, swish the mouth of the bottle in the reservoir to ensure it's all sanitized, and remove it. I'll take another bottle, swish its mouth in the reservoir, put on top and rinse. That second bottle will stay there, draining, while I fill the first. Then each successive bottle is the same: remove drained bottle from vinator, grab next bottle, swish mouth, squirt twice, let it sit on vinator while I fill the first one.
After I fill a bottle I grab a cap from the reservoir and put it on the bottle. After about a half dozen bottles, I'll cap 'em. I use a
super agata bench capper, but it doesn't much matter what you use.
I'm not going to tell you to get into kegging, as you requested
, but if you could find someone who had a keg system you could use for your beer, you'd find it's even easier. I have a growler filler I can also use to fill bottles; I use that if I'm taking beer to a party or poker game. I'll use my
homemade counterflow filler if I'm bottling for longer storage.
I know that some of what I list above costs money....well, all of it does, and not everybody has available disposable income to just buy whatever. If you have young kids at home, or college loans to pay, or....whatever...I get it. I was there too, but if you can afford $40 for a fastrack system, $40 for a good capper, $20 for a vinator, you're there. If you could only buy one thing, buy the vinator. It was a pain in the tush to pull bottles from a vat of star san, wait for them to drain....when the vinator is 2 seconds to squirt a bottle twice, and it waits there draining while you fill the previous one.
Good luck, and get that beer in those bottles!
EDITED TO ADD: Cleaning bottles in the dishwasher is always done with bottles I've triple-rinsed after emptying. I don't know how well that works with bottles with crud in the bottom--but then, I don't let crud sit in bottles and dry out.
How many of us have gone from only bottling, then to only kegging never bottling and end up bottling from our kegs using some type of 'beer gun' process?
