Please don't hate me Revvy...

[johnodon]

...but I think I bottled my first and last beer!

Last night was my first adventure in bottling and it could not have gone worse. Talk about the stars not being aligned. I just want to throw this info out there to make sure others do not run into the same roadblocks that I did. By no means is this an anti-bottling campaign.

• I have 2 bottling wands (one from my Coopers kit and one from my siphon kit) and neither of them fit into the spigot that came with my bottling bucket.
  
• No combination of hose/bottling wand would work either. If it fit on teh bottling wand...it didn't fit in/on the spigot...and vice versa.
  
• I basically had to bottle by holding each bottle right up to the spigot. This caused a lot of air and I had to let each bottle settle and fill again to top off. Talk about non-efficient!
  
• The craphole spigot I bought will not stay in the open position. This wasn't so much of an issue since I couldn't use the wand, but it would have drove me up a wall otehrwise.
  
• I think I must have received a defective spigot when I bought my bottling bucket. It leaked like an SOB from the where the very end of the faucet goes into the body of the unit. I think I ended up with more beer on the floor than in the bottles.

In the end, I got only 46 bottles out of the exactly 5 gallon batch. I know a lot of this could have been solved if I would have done a dry run first and made sure everything played well together. Unfortunately, that is not my nature and I have nobody to blame other than myself. I tend to jump in feet first and learn as I go.

OK...overly-dramatic moment over...

I am going to stop by my LHBS on the way home and get a new spigot and bottling wand...ones I know fit each other. My plans still remains to move to kegging ASAP (in fact I am going to buy 2 cornys while I am there), but I still want the ability to bottle when needed.

I definitely see the attraction to bottling, but I just have such a sour taste in my mouth right now that it will take a bit to get over.

John

 

[jkreuze]

Keg in the closet pizza on the floor
left over from the night before
where we were going we didn't really care
we had all we ever wanted in that
keg in the closet

Kenny Chesney

(I don't listen to Country music but I thought I'd doll up my "I love kegs" comment a little)

 

[maxamuus]

If you have some half inch plastic tubing (at least i think its half inch) you just need about 2 inches of that. It fits over the spigot and the wand.

 

[devilishprune]

I feel your pain friend. The last bad bottling experience I had turned me over to kegging. Filling the first ones up this weekend, but I think that I'll still bottle my bigger beers.

Not that it's any consolation, but the new spigot and wand you bought should solve your problems. Also, not that it helps now, if you screw in the spigot TOO tight, then it will leak; it will also leak if you don't screw it in tight enough. There's a bit of a sweet spot to it.

 

[buzzkill]

on the other hand, next time you bottle you will have a much better time.

 

[david_42]

I've never bottled a batch. I don't enjoy tasks that involve doing the same thing over and over and over. Some people see it as a form of meditation or contemplation. But, without my kezzer, I wouldn't be homebrewing.

But, I agree with buzzkill, there is much room for improvement of the experience.

PS I'm a lousy gardener as well.

 

[IrregularPulse]

I've never bottled a batch. I don't enjoy tasks that involve doing the same thing over and over and over. Some people see it as a form of meditation or contemplation. But, without my kezzer, I wouldn't be homebrewing.

But, I agree with buzzkill, there is much room for improvement of the experience.

PS I'm a lousy gardener as well.

I agree. I don't that doubt that without kegging, I'd probably stopped brewing a long time ago.

 

[Diver165]

If you have some half inch plastic tubing (at least i think its half inch) you just need about 2 inches of that. It fits over the spigot and the wand.

+1 on that!

I cut 2inches of tubing off my autosiphon. I heated it up in some boiling water to make it soft and it slid right on my bottling wand and bottle bucket spigot. The piece of tubing now stays on the bottling wand. I take it on and off the spigot w/o issues. When I'm ready to bottle I dip the end in some boiling water to soften and stick it back on the spigot.

I've had no issues.

FWIW, I'm making the move to kegging. Not because because bottling is a PITA. But because I want to. I'll still bottle. I just won't do it nearly as often.

 

[JohnnyO]

+1 on that!

I cut 2inches of tubing off my autosiphon. I heated it up in some boiling water to make it soft and it slid right on my bottling wand and bottle bucket spigot. The piece of tubing now stays on the bottling wand. I take it on and off the spigot w/o issues. When I'm ready to bottle I dip the end in some boiling water to soften and stick it back on the spigot.

I've had no issues.

FWIW, I'm making the move to kegging. Not because because bottling is a PITA. But because I want to. I'll still bottle. I just won't do it nearly as often.

I could have said the exact same words.

Brother?