Bottleing question

[Ken L]

When i bottle, I tend to fill the bottle right up to within 10 - 15mm of the top and not use very much sugar to prime.
When i was starting out, I found that if I got things wrong, the devestation from the resulting bottle bomb was nowhere near as bad as with the biiger air gap and more sugar.

Recently, i've been looking at threads talking about the "little bottler" and if I'm not mistaken, this will fill the bottle from the bottom but then the level will drop when it's removed by an amount equivelent to the amount of beer displaced by the tube.

How much does the level actually drop when you use one of these ?

Can anyone convince me that i don't need to top up and that I should simply prime with a little more sugar ?

 

[craigite]

I use one of those bottlers. You might see it in the pictures I posted in brew days under AG10/11 poor weather in Orkney.

I fill to about 10mm from the top then I take out the filler tube leaving about 25mm air gap.
As I understand it air can be compressed but liquid can not. So with a decenent air gap I should reduce the chance of exploding bottles. So far in my time brewing I've never had an exploding bottle :pray:

I prime with less than 100g sugar per 25liters.
:hmm: I just know I've have a bottle pop now I've said that.

 

[Wez]

I use one and generally find that the level drops to about where I want it once the little bottler is removed, if you want to have less space you can always angle the compression tip to the inside of the neck of the bottle and add a tad more.

Definately a good buy IMO.

 

[snail59]

Im with Wez best bit of kit Ive got. If you fill the bottle to the top when you remove the tube it ends up at the bulge in the neck perfect :thumb:

 

[rabbie]

Hmm, interesting question!
I've never thought that the volume you leave above the liquid has any noticable effect on the level of carbonation to be honest...
Are you using brewing software? I tend to adjust the carbonation based on the style of beer I'm making, so I don't always use the same amount. I would say that getting the carbonation right is quite important in terms of getting a good result, and avoiding explosions :shock: I've had one bottle go, but that was the result of not mixing the sugar through the bottling bucket.
I think the bottler is great, as Wez says you can fill the bottle right up by angling the bottler so that the pin sits just inside the lip of the bottle. My thinking is that filling to the same level as the beers I buy must be ok, and that's seen me right so far.

 

[Ken L]

How strange. I posted on this thread last night and now it's gone.
Oh well.
I think I will get a little bottler 'cause it sounds like it makes the job a lot easier, even if I do have to top up.

Compressability of gasses is the problem with a big gap at the top of the bottle. With a very small air gap, if a bottle lets go, the top might pop off and the bottle shatter but thats about it. With a bigger gap, there's a much greater volume of highly compressed gas to propel the glass outwards.
We did a few experiments as kids that convinced us of this but if you're going to repeate them be VERY careful. On some of them, we crown capped with the bottle only a third full of sugar solution and yeast and they lived up to the name bomb - punching glass right through a wooden fence.