Bottling mare...

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AlanManley

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OK so I used an auto syphon. Bloody nightmare. As I'm giving it a pump to get it going it's bellowing out and the tub kept jumping out of the bottling bucket.

Finally got it in and then couldn't judge the bottle filling quite right (Only my second attempt at bottling).

Also broke a bottle top when capping so lost a bottle there.

Out of 10ltrs (5 chilli 5 vanilla) I got 10 x 330ml bottles of each. 66% yield. Not great but I'll take it.

Tomorrow I'm bottling 19ltrs of IPA. New plan.... syphon I to mashtun (has a tap) bottle through tap. Simples! (Hopefully!

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I use plastic bottles, I like the 500 ml but never have enough, so most in 2 litre bottles, bottling with 2 litre is quick, and if you make an error and bottle too easy you can feel the pressure and release a bit without recapping.

I found you need 9 inches bottom of fermenter to top of bottle. Better with more, but the syphon sucks out the CO2 in the brew so less than 9 inches and you lose syphon. Remember fill from bottom of bottle or you get loads of foam, so you need a tap in syphon tube so you can turn off, remove from one bottle and put down to bottom of next before turning it on again.

I have many times added too much sugar to prime, even a 2 litre bottle only needs a tea spoon of sugar, often not even that much. With a crown cap once off that's it, but with screw cap when you release and see it starting to foam up you can screw it back down again without beer going everywhere.

I like the 500 ml coke bottles as can pour whole bottle into a pint mug in one go. With the 2 litre bottle the first pour is crystal clear, but then yeast is disturbed so gets slightly cloudy. Tastes OK though.
 
I have a shelf over my bench, put the bottling bucket up there, then from the tap a length of tubing with a bottling wand on the end.
I can rest it in an empty bottle and while it is filling that, cap the previous bottle with my bench capper, insert a new cap in the capper , grab a new bottle just as the bottle is nearing full and repeat.
It is a bit of a juggle but once you got into it, goes so fast. I use 330ml bottles so if you use bigger bottles you have more time. Have never timed it but I recon it takes less than 25minutes to fill 65 bottles and cap them. I will timelaps it next time I do it!
 
You should have more success bottling from a tap, but a bottling stick is a great, and cheap bit if kit. Seriously reduces oxygen getting into your beer.
 
I always bottle straight out of the tap on my FV. Well, I've got 2 actually, one has a special tap that fits a bottling wand, the other doesn't so with that one I just fill a jug and then fill bottles via a funnel. To be honest I haven't yet decided which one I prefer - there's advantages and disadvantages to both methods.
I've got some really old beer bottles that are coming to the end of their life - after about 35 to 40 years of re-use! Occasionally I snap the top off one when I'm using the capper. I'm a tight git though and just strain the beer through a kitchen towel in a funnel to get any bits of glass out...
 
Get a bottling bucket with a bottling wand, like this: http://www.home-brew-online.com/equ...5-ltr-including-little-bottler-plain-lid-p800

For the sake of a few quid it makes the job so much easy and you can batch prime as well further simplifying the process :)

Definitely this! Taps are the future and the bottling wand makes life so much easier.

I've got taps of one form or another on everything now, kettle, fermenter bucket, no chill container & bottling bucket, I got by with the syphon for a while but could have used at least one extra hand.

You can also get the tap & bottling wand for a fiver at Wilkinson's if you have one nearby
http://www.wilko.com/homebrew-accessories+equipment/wilko-bottling-wand-with-tap/invt/0441127
 
Using the Mashtun was perfect. Used the hose off the auto syphon as a wand replacement. 2 x 5l kegs and 26 bottles bottled in an hr. Perfect!

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The only thing I would add to what has been said already is if you have to use crown caps (and lets face it, the glass bottles look a lot better than the PET ones) then you need a bench capper like the one here https://www.jbconline.co.uk/shop/cappers I too have broken bottles with the lever capper... plus if it is a Ferrari then can say you own a Ferrari
 
How do so many people break necks with clappers?? It seems to get reported here a lot.. Do you push down on the neck or something?
Sometimes bottles take a knock I suppose. I had one go in my last batch with virtually no pressure at all. I'm assuming it took a bang at some point that weakened it at some point.

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How do so many people break necks with clappers?? It seems to get reported here a lot.. Do you push down on the neck or something?

...It takes a lot of sheer brute force, ignorance and quite a bit of frustration. I've done it a couple of times. Once I got the bench capper it became alot wasier and quicker.
 
I use plastic bottles, I like the 500 ml but never have enough, so most in 2 litre bottles, bottling with 2 litre is quick, and if you make an error and bottle too easy you can feel the pressure and release a bit without recapping.

I found you need 9 inches bottom of fermenter to top of bottle. Better with more, but the syphon sucks out the CO2 in the brew so less than 9 inches and you lose syphon. Remember fill from bottom of bottle or you get loads of foam, so you need a tap in syphon tube so you can turn off, remove from one bottle and put down to bottom of next before turning it on again.

I have many times added too much sugar to prime, even a 2 litre bottle only needs a tea spoon of sugar, often not even that much. With a crown cap once off that's it, but with screw cap when you release and see it starting to foam up you can screw it back down again without beer going everywhere.

I like the 500 ml coke bottles as can pour whole bottle into a pint mug in one go. With the 2 litre bottle the first pour is crystal clear, but then yeast is disturbed so gets slightly cloudy. Tastes OK though.

With a 2L bottle, you need a pint pot and a 2L plastic jug from Wilko that might cost as little as £1 in a sale. Does the job without picking up the yeast, if you fill the glass first and then the jug with a single pour.

A pint pot with a plastic drinks mat on the top will keep a beer overnight in the fridge, if you don't want all 4x 500ml at once. Does not improve it much, mind!:lol:
 
I had a bottling mare last night...put 10l in to Easy Kegs then filled 20 bottles, all capped and put away when I stumbled upon the priming solution still sitting on top of my brew fridge! :oops: After a bit of huffing I had to take the caps off all of the bottles, add 1/2 tsp sugar and recap....I won't be making that mistake again!
 
I had a bottling mare last night...put 10l in to Easy Kegs then filled 20 bottles, all capped and put away when I stumbled upon the priming solution still sitting on top of my brew fridge! :oops: After a bit of huffing I had to take the caps off all of the bottles, add 1/2 tsp sugar and recap....I won't be making that mistake again!

I done exactly the same with an amber ale I made. I decided to let them carb up naturally. The beer took around a month to condition. It is now probably my best beer I've made and the carbonation is now pretty much exactly how you would expect a cask ale to be.
 
I done exactly the same with an amber ale I made. I decided to let them carb up naturally. The beer took around a month to condition. It is now probably my best beer I've made and the carbonation is now pretty much exactly how you would expect a cask ale to be.

If only I'd known that last night! :lol:
 

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