Some questions about bottling/sanitizing.

[acollier25]

Alright, so I recently bought the coopers microbrew kit and have bottled my first batch in the plastic PET bottles that are included in the kit. My second batch of cooper's dark ale is about to complete fermentation, I bought a capper and some caps, and have been saving all of my 12 oz beer bottles. So question number 1: what is the best way to go about steralizing these bottles, I do not have any of the tap attachments or anything like that and I have heard that you should not rinse your bottles out with tap water anyways, is this correct? I was thinking of filling a big plastic tub full of the bottles with C-brite (which is what I'm using as a steralizer), letting them soak, and then rinsing them off with cool boiled water, would this be a good way to go about this? One more question, I have heard all kinds of different amounts of priming sugar you are supposed to put into each 12 oz bottle, could somebody tell me the correct amount, I'm worried of over priming and having a mess on my hands. Thanks!

-Adam

 

[pkeeler]

I think you are going to make this more complicated than needed. Unless you suspect your tap water has some kind of contamination, you can rinse your bottles in it. If it bothers you, turn up your hot water heater and use really hot water.

I'm not saying this is the best way, there are many ways to do this. But you ask a lot of questions, so I think it easiest to just lay out what I do with used beer bottles and how I bottle:

1. rinse out any beer and yeast residue. If you do this right after pouring/drinking you can get everything out just with water from the tap (no brushes or jets needed).

2. Soak the bottle overnight in a solution of oxyclean to get the label off

3. rinse out the bottles and rinse off any leftover glue. Invert bottle to dry.

4. Put aluminum foil over the top and store.

5. The night before bottling, put 54 of these stored, foil topped, bottles in the oven. Bake at 350 deg. for 60 min. Turn off heat, go to bed (don't open oven).

6. Measure out priming sugar, boil with 2 cups water. Put in fridge to cool.

7. Move the fermenter to the bottling area with a bottling bucket cleaned and sanitized (along with all the bottling equipment and bottle caps needed that can soak in the bucket with the sanitizer).

8. Put the priming solution into the bottling bucket then rack the beer on top.

9. remove foil, fill bottle, cap. I actually put the cap on the bottle and set it aside then use the capper on all of them at once (to me, this allows CO2 to purge the bottle).

 

[acollier25]

Thank you for your help, but my oven is quite small, don't think 54 bottles would fit, and also, I do not have a bottling bucket yet, I'm going to prime each bottle individually. I will eventually get more equipment but this is all I have at the moment. I suppose I could use very hot tap water to rinse them out, I had just read somewhere that bottles shouldn't be rinsed out with tap water, not sure if this is correct or not. Also, I have already rinsed all of the bottles out right after drinking and have soaked them to remove the labels, they are ready to be sanitized.

 

[TipsyDragon]

first off you cant sterilize a bottle with normal cleaners/sanitizers.

C-brite comes in a cleaner and a sanitizer form. check which one you have. a cleaner will not sanitize and a sanitize wont clean.

i rince my bottles out immediately after emptying them with tap water. i then stick them in the dish washer. after they are clean i put them in a box and leave them till bottling day. on bottling day i soak the bottles in a batch of StarSan.

as far as priming i would do batch priming instead of bottle priming. with bottle priming you can not get the exact same amount of sugar in each bottle if you pour a spoon at a time in. if you go with the carb tabs you are locked into what ever increment they are made for and they may not completely dissolve.

to batch prime figure out how much sugar you need for the style and batch size. if you need help go here. mix the sugar with water and boil for 10 minutes. then cool and pour into your bottling bucket. then rack the beer into that making sure to get a natural swirling motion going. then bottle.

 

[mattd2]

to batch prime figure out how much sugar you need for the style and batch size. if you need help go here. mix the sugar with water and boil for 10 minutes. then cool and pour into your bottling bucket. then rack the beer into that making sure to get a natural swirling motion going. then bottle.

OP mentioned that he did not have a bottling bucket (edit: just looked at the times of the posts and I think you were typing your's when OP replied), however niether do I but I have batch primed by pouring the cooled sugar/water into the fermeter and gently stiring with a clean and sanitised paddle being careful not to touch the trub. This has given me pretty good results so far.
As for not rinsing with tap water, I would imagine it is more of a case that the sanitiser does not need to be rinsed not that it shouldn't be rinsed. Most sanitisers I have seen commonaly used for homebrewing are no-rinse. But check on the directions on you products.

 

[pkeeler]

A plastic food grade bucket will pay for itself pretty quickly next to the cost of priming tablets. If you have primary and secondary fermenters, then one should be empty and could be a bottling bucket. I'd also go with mixing the sugar into the fermenter rather than trying to do it in individual bottles.

Bleach is a good sanitizer for bottles. One tablespoon per gallon for 20 minutes will sanitize. Supposedly, you don't have to rinse, but I rinse with hot tap water.

 

[mattd2]

Bleach is a good sanitizer for bottles. One tablespoon per gallon for 20 minutes will sanitize. Supposedly, you don't have to rinse, but I rinse with hot tap water.

I remember reading somewhere (some civil defense disaster guide) that to sanitise water for drinking you add bleach until you can faintly smell the bleach so I guess what you say about it being no rinse would be true, but there is a difference between finding/making drinkable water after a earthquake (i.e. who cares what it taste like) and making beer . I can't remember the source and it was a few years ago so don't trust/quote me on that!

 

[KevinW]

For me, Oxyclean(perfume free) to soak and scrub with a brush, great for removing labels.

Iodophor and a vinator to sanitize then place them on a bottle tree to dry! Not too hard of work and have had no issues at all.

Food grade plastic bucket with a tap upgrade(if you can drill a hole) is pretty cheap and makes bottling so much easier!

 

[SNPorter]

Thank you for your help, but my oven is quite small, don't think 54 bottles would fit, and also, I do not have a bottling bucket yet, I'm going to prime each bottle individually. I will eventually get more equipment but this is all I have at the moment. I suppose I could use very hot tap water to rinse them out, I had just read somewhere that bottles shouldn't be rinsed out with tap water, not sure if this is correct or not. Also, I have already rinsed all of the bottles out right after drinking and have soaked them to remove the labels, they are ready to be sanitized.

This guy does it pretty much like you are. Don't worry about the tap water it will be fine. Nothing wrong with bottle priming either. I wonder if everybody gets perfect distribution of priming sugar every time batch priming.

 

[acollier25]

Thank you all for your comments, I might just go and get a bottling bucket and the siphon equipment tomorrow. The fermenter I have is 23 liters, and the cooper's instructions I am looking at requires 8 g of sugar per liter, so at 184 grams I have .4 of a pound. Is this the usual amount? Also, what are the advantages of using a bottling bucket and siphoning the brew into it, rather than just mixing the priming sugar into the fermenter?

 

[mattd2]

By using a bottling bucket there is less chance of disturbing the trub when mixing. I am assuming the coopers kit has a tap on the fermenter? if so do you need a siphon, could you not just attach the hose to the tap and then into the bottling bucket?

 

[pkeeler]

The fermenter I have is 23 liters, and the cooper's instructions I am looking at requires 8 g of sugar per liter, so at 184 grams I have .4 of a pound. Is this the usual amount?

Is your fermenter filled to the top? I would do the calculation with the actual amount of liters of beer you have. The usual amount is around 4 oz or 3/4 cup of corn sugar.

 

[KevinW]

If you have a bottling bucket w/spigot you can fill the bottles much quicker, cleaner, and easier. The siphon makes racking/transferring the beer/wort easier, no splashing!
Plus when using a siphon and bucket you can rack your beer off of the trub so that you will have a minimum of sediment in your bottles.
After conditioning in the bottle(2-3 weeks) all you want to see on the bottom of your bottles is the yeast from carbonation!
I have used 3/4 cup which comes out to about 4oz of corn sugar for all of my beers and I have had great carbonation. I like a fair amount of carbonation but of course some styles need less some need more but in the end it is what you want!!

 

[DoctorHops]

What I do is rinse the bottles out after I have finished the beer that was in them. Or at least I usually do that. Well for the first few beers of a session anyway.

Then before I bottle, I soak the bottles in Oxyclean/hotwater in the sink and rinse with hot water. Oxyclean is a cleaner, not a sanitizer. Well not an official FDA approved sanitizer, but that is a discussion for another time.

I have sanitized in three ways, the first is to soak the bottles in an iodophor solution after the Oxyclean soak, invert them in the dishwasher rack without rinsing and then bottle.

I have also used the oven, 350F for an hour, but they take a long time to cool, and my oven only holds about 48 bottles, so I am worried that I will be short bottles, even though I never am. But don't use this method if you want to bottle right after sanitizing, it will take hours for the bottles to cool. NO rinsing required with this method.

The last time I bottled, I cleaned the bottles in oxyclean, then rinsed. I mixed up some iodophor solution in a quart squirt bottle. I took the clean and rinsed bottles, squirted the iodophor solution in them from as many angles as I could, then inverted the bottles on the dishwasher rack to drain. Then quickly bottled. This appears to work well. A poor man's Vinator as it were.

Some sanitizers are contract sanitizers, iodophor is one; so when you rinse it, you have also rinsed off the sanitation.

I don't rinse as we have well water that is not treated. Still, I suspect that if it doesn't make us sick, it won't make the beer sick.

I prime the bottling bucket with 3/4 cup corn sugar dissolved in about 2 cups of very hot water, heated up in a microwave. I pour the priming solution into the bottling bucket, then siphon the beer from the fermenter to the bottling bucket which ensures that the priming sugar is well mixed. Also siphoning from the fermenter to the bottling bucket helps avoid getting the trub in the bottles in case you don't keep the end of the siphon tube far enough above the bottom of the fermenter. You get two chances to keep it out. The siphoning also stirs up the yeast a bit so they will be more active in the bottle to carbonate the beer. Or so the theory goes.

Soak the caps in sanitizer. Bottle and cap. This is best done with two people. I write the brewing date, the bottling date and some indication of the beer name on the cap with a very fine point Sharpie. So my Australian Sparkling Ale cap would read:

ASA
12/27/9
1/28/10

on the cap, It is also worth bottling one or more in a clear plastic soda or sparkling water bottle. Just clean and sanitize the bottle and bottle cap, then screw it back on. This way you can tell how carbonation is progressing by squeezing it; when fully carbed it will be very hard, how it is clearing, and how the yeast is depositing out. If you keep the clear plastic bottle out of sunlight it will not oxidize.

I also came to the realization that it doesn't matter if I get all the label off or all the glue off the bottle. I know it isn't what the label says it is. That is what the writing on the cap is for. If I pour from the bottle to a glass, the aesthetics of the served beer aren't affected.

If you find someone to help you that actually likes bottling, be very nice to them.