Bottling.

[Alistair Miller]

Well I've bought some kit to help with bottling. I have a bottle rinser, bottle drainer and a bottling wand/stick. I was testing the bottling stick just with a bucket of water into a bottle and have been having some problems getting it to work. Is there anything particular I need to do to get it going?

I used a syphon tube I already had and had to put a bit of tape round it as it was narrower than the connection on the bottling stick.

 

[Victor Churchill]

If you dunk the end of the syphon tube in hot water for a few mins it may soften so you can stretch it over the end of the bottling wand.

My first efforts with a wand were using a poly tube connected to a tap at the bottom of the FV; a bit of a pfaff. I've found it easir second time around plugging the stick directly into the tap at te bottom of the FV and offering the bottles up to it directly.

 

[Davewhit]

Gravity is key. Getting bucket or fv higher than bottle's or barrel should improve flow vastly.

Dave

 

[Chippy_Tea]

I also use a standard syphon tube and a little bottler i join the tap that i got with it to the little bottler tube using the long tapered end and the other end to the flexible syphon tube and it works well.


I cut the larger diameter tube off mine (see arrow in picture below) to make it fit inside the flexible tube using the hot water method mentioned above (before i decided to use the tap method later) but it may not be necessary.

 

[skulltat280]

I brewed a kit many years ago. I used the bottler stick plugged directly into the tap, didn't have any problems except for some drips on the floor

 

[Chippy_Tea]

My FV doesn't have a tap and i didn't want to drill a hole in it so i went for the syphon tube method.

 

[Clint]

Trouble in what respect? If your bottles have a pronounced,domed base then sometimes the pin on the wand slips and won't compress to release the beer. Angle the bottle.Another one is if you have a lid firmly fixed to your bottling bucket,as you drop the beer it creates a vacuum in the bucket and stops the flow. Open the tap... obvious...but I'm as guilty as hell on this one!

 

[Chippy_Tea]

I cut thee little pegs off the bottom to stop the curved bottle problem you describe.

 

[Harbey]

The different tube sizes involved in brewing has to be my biggest frustration with home-brewing (well, that and having teenage sons drinking all my brews!). It's about time Terissa May forgot Brexit and turned her attention to a standardised home-brewing tube diameter.

Where tubes 'almost' fit, use some Duck Tape or similar to avoid leakage. Also, I find using a wand and a syphon to bottle is a two man job - one at each end - to avoid pulling up yeast or air, or having beer overflowing from the bottles etc.

 

[Martybhoy]

I find that the bottling wands have different flow rates. If you press fully down, the flow rate is really slow. But a softer press and the flow rate increases.