Bottle wand very slow
- Thread starter danmac
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Probably blocked with crud or you have a kink in the tube - if you have one make sure the flow restrictor
is'nt clicked shut.
Galena
Landlord.
On mine if it is fully pressed it is slow, if it is half pressed it is faster.
lupinehorror
Landlord.
same with mine.
danmac
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Yeah that seems a bit faster now
Galena
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It took me several sessions to figure it out
Same here.
lupinehorror
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i'll admit to only spending £6 on mine. those with heftier price tags may (or may not) be better at full push.
danmac
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Mine came with a starter kit
A couple of things to add...bottles with a domed base can be awkward to get the mechanism depressed and don't push the lid down tight in your bottling bucket!
Galena
Landlord.
Indeed! Unfortunately I have lots of bottles with domed base
Seconded.
Made a Festival Bonfire Toffee kit which contains oak fines. They clogged right up. Never an issue.with wine (probably due to 2 part finings). Was like a morse code telegraph operator tapping away. Didnt realise until I opened the bottles and had Russian roulette gushes, nucleating on stray sawdust.
damienair
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I recently brewed a Festival Oaked Apple Cider kit and it had oak chips and dried apple pieces floating around in the brew. I got some Muslin cloth and a elastic band and after a 10 minute boil and a few minutes in Chemsan I attached the Muslin cloth to the tip of my auto siphon and siphoned the cider over to a bottling bucket. It managed to filter out the crud. I also had muslin cloth on the inside of the bottling bucket at the tap. So it was double filtered. Thankfully it didn’t clog up the bottling wand as I had feared. A bit overkill but it worked.
I found the same so cut the little legs off the end which improved the flow.
Every so often take teh end off and the spring and make sure its all clean and no crap in there.. even if you sanitise it, you will find from time to time some crud / break or hop material can end up in there.
I'm sure this is a silly question, but are you making sure there's not a vacuum forming in your FV? If you have a tight fitting lid to your FV the flow will eventually stop until you either release the lid a touch to let some air in or pump in some CO2 to help push the beer out - there are lots of threads about the latter in the forum.
But like everyone else, I find the flow is better when only half pressed down
But like everyone else, I find the flow is better when only half pressed down
I noticed on mine that if I twist the pin at the end in 1/4 turns the flow is different when fully depressed, depending on its position.
A couple of you have mentioned using Festival kits. I use the little bag which comes with the Festival beer kits on the end of my siphon tubing (opposite end to the bottling wand, obvs 
) and I find that this reduces the amount of crud that is transferred which could jam up the wand.
I use a bag on the end of the tubing when transferring from the fv to the priming bucket and then another on the tubing with the bottling wand, effectively double filtering. I find I get very little hop debris etc transferred to bottles.
I've also found that bottles with domed bottoms and PET bottles with dimples bottoms (eg coke bottles) are sometimes difficult to fill. You have to find the sweet spot to position the bottling wand to get a decent flow.
) and I find that this reduces the amount of crud that is transferred which could jam up the wand. I use a bag on the end of the tubing when transferring from the fv to the priming bucket and then another on the tubing with the bottling wand, effectively double filtering. I find I get very little hop debris etc transferred to bottles.
I've also found that bottles with domed bottoms and PET bottles with dimples bottoms (eg coke bottles) are sometimes difficult to fill. You have to find the sweet spot to position the bottling wand to get a decent flow.
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