Faster Bottling

[chovain]

I'm relatively new here, so firstly, a bit about my "packaging" habits. I bottled for years, before finally getting sick of sanitising all those bottles, and spending eternity waiting for 20L of beer to flow through the tiny valve in a blue bottler. I went and got myself a pretty good keg system, but have started going back to bottling a bit, as it's easier to have a good range of beers available when you keep them in bottles.

I've been working to speed up my bottling lately, as it is a part of brewing that I really don't enjoy. Here are a few of the tricks that I reckon can really help improve your bottling experience:

• Don't use a sediment reducer in your priming vessel (I'm a bulk primer). This one is really pretty obvious. Those things really slow things down, and you don't need it if your beer is only going to spend a few minutes in the vessel.
• Maximise the drop to the bottle. I put my priming vessel up on the fridge, and connect the blue bottler via a good length of hosing. This will start to get the flow rates up to a point that you really need to worry about aeration, especially at the start of each bottle when the level in the bottle is below the blue bottler's valve. Tilting the bottles can help, or give each bottle a short burst of CO2 if you're a kegger.
• Tilt your fermenter. The dead space in a standard fermenter is pretty high. Most people tilt the fermenter anyway as they get close to the end. I'm not the most coordinated guy, and find it much easier to keep the fermenter tilted the whole time. Put it on a wooden base, and chock the base up at the back.
• Don't always use a bottling valve. This one will probably be controversial. One thing that always bugged me about bottling was that as the level in the fermenter drops, the flow rate drops. Getting the level right without losing beer on the first bottle can be quite tricky; Filling the bulk of the volume seems to take forever. I take the blue bottler right off, and fill as many bottles as I reckon I'll get to part way up the neck (Be conservative with the number of bottles - Don't fill too many or you'll end up with a bunch of not-quite-full bottles). Between each bottle, just kink the hose to stop the flow. You'll lose a little between each bottle, but it's less than you'd expect. Once you're done, put the bottler back on the hose, and top up each of the bottles. Again, be really careful about aeration here!

Does anyone else have any suggestions for making bottling a better experience?

 

[Doogiechap]

I'm relatively new here, so firstly, a bit about my "packaging" habits. I bottled for years, before finally getting sick of sanitising all those bottles, and spending eternity waiting for 20L of beer to flow through the tiny valve in a blue bottler. I went and got myself a pretty good keg system, but have started going back to bottling a bit, as it's easier to have a good range of beers available when you keep them in bottles.

I've been working to speed up my bottling lately, as it is a part of brewing that I really don't enjoy. Here are a few of the tricks that I reckon can really help improve your bottling experience:

• Don't use a sediment reducer in your priming vessel (I'm a bulk primer). This one is really pretty obvious. Those things really slow things down, and you don't need it if your beer is only going to spend a few minutes in the vessel.
• Maximise the drop to the bottle. I put my priming vessel up on the fridge, and connect the blue bottler via a good length of hosing. This will start to get the flow rates up to a point that you really need to worry about aeration, especially at the start of each bottle when the level in the bottle is below the blue bottler's valve. Tilting the bottles can help, or give each bottle a short burst of CO2 if you're a kegger.
• Tilt your fermenter. The dead space in a standard fermenter is pretty high. Most people tilt the fermenter anyway as they get close to the end. I'm not the most coordinated guy, and find it much easier to keep the fermenter tilted the whole time. Put it on a wooden base, and chock the base up at the back.
• Don't always use a bottling valve. This one will probably be controversial. One thing that always bugged me about bottling was that as the level in the fermenter drops, the flow rate drops. Getting the level right without losing beer on the first bottle can be quite tricky; Filling the bulk of the volume seems to take forever. I take the blue bottler right off, and fill as many bottles as I reckon I'll get to part way up the neck (Be conservative with the number of bottles - Don't fill too many or you'll end up with a bunch of not-quite-full bottles). Between each bottle, just kink the hose to stop the flow. You'll lose a little between each bottle, but it's less than you'd expect. Once you're done, put the bottler back on the hose, and top up each of the bottles. Again, be really careful about aeration here!

Does anyone else have any suggestions for making bottling a better experience?

G'day Mark,
Some golden ideas and thoughts here
Happy reading !
Cheers
Doug

 

[beernography]

Acquire a 13 year old brother.... and bottle the same day all his mates come over to bludge the pool!!

Not that I make a point of gloating that I use child labour to bottle my beer

 

[chris.taylor.98]

... this tip does not work quite as well with 3-7yr olds, and is probably even more in contravening the child labor laws.

 

[SpillsMostOfIt]

My #1 tip:

Use bigger bottles. There's currently a Moet promotion campaign in progress where bloddy big (empty) bottles are on display. I reckon get two of them and you've covered a standard-size batch...

 

[tcraig20]

My #1 tip:

Use bigger bottles. There's currently a Moet promotion campaign in progress where bloddy big (empty) bottles are on display. I reckon get two of them and you've covered a standard-size batch...

One or two of those gallon Johnnie Walker bottles should do the job too

I reckon a bottle rinser is a great time saver. Couple of squirts with no-rinse sanitiser and you're done.

 

[InCider]

I use child labour, but even better than that is the pressure wash/gurney.

It cleans bottles in about 10 seconds, (two washes with a rinse afterwards)and it's great for cleaning stubborn krausen off the sides. Pretty water-wise too.

Never have I used bottle wash, just rinse after use and gurney on bottle day. No problems. Brewing should be easy.

InCider.

 

[danman]

this was my method whilst using bottles.



prime each bottle as per usual. if you look closely at the second pic,i purchased a second lil bottler and chopped an inch or more off it and stuffed it inside some food grade (10mm) id i think clear hose and then stuffed the lil bottler into the other end or the hose. almost made bottling beer a pleasurable job :lol:



now i use kegs,so i remove the lil bottler from one end and install a common garden hose filter from bunnings which ive adapted to house some muslin cloth,and into the kegs we go



cant get any easier i dont recon. had to adapt the filter coz with gravity only the wort wouldnt flow through the tiny holes in the orig filter screen. hope these pics and ideas help

cheer,dan

 

[chovain]

For cleaning the bottles, I go down the sterilisation path: No chemicals, little effort, and flexible timing. The bottles get a basic rinse soon after use. They often hang around for a while before I get enough to be bothered delabelling, re-rinsing, and hanging them on a bottle tree. When I have 16 bottles, and some time that the oven isn't in use, I put foil on them, and put them in a 180-200C oven for an hour or so. Make sure you don't pre-heat the oven though, and let them cool in their own time, otherwise you'll stress them. Throw them in a box, and they're ready to use when you need them.

It's probably more work than using bottle washers and things, but I love the fact that I can do it well before bottling, which means I'm less likely to procrastinate when it comes time to bottle.

 

[Steve]

I put foil on them

Seriously? You wrapped each bottle in foil? No wonder you went and got yourself a kegging system.
Steve

 

[chovain]

Seriously? You wrapped each bottle in foil? No wonder you went and got yourself a kegging system.
Steve

Heh - not quite. I just put a little piece (about 5cm sq) of foil over the mouth of each bottle, and squeeze. It's an easy form of temporary capping. I cover 16 bottles in less than 2 mins. It means I can keep them much longer without worrying about dust and other crap getting into them after they've been sterilised.

I only started sterilising (instead of sanitising) after I got back into bottling - it's actually what convinced me to give bottling another shot.

 

[apd]

For cleaning the bottles, I go down the sterilisation path: No chemicals, little effort, and flexible timing. The bottles get a basic rinse soon after use. They often hang around for a while before I get enough to be bothered delabelling, re-rinsing, and hanging them on a bottle tree. When I have 16 bottles, and some time that the oven isn't in use, I put foil on them, and put them in a 180-200C oven for an hour or so. Make sure you don't pre-heat the oven though, and let them cool in their own time, otherwise you'll stress them. Throw them in a box, and they're ready to use when you need them.

It's probably more work than using bottle washers and things, but I love the fact that I can do it well before bottling, which means I'm less likely to procrastinate when it comes time to bottle.

I'll second the bottle baking method, along with rinse/wash immediately after use. I don't think it's any more work, especially since you do the washing a couple of bottles at a time (with your other household dishes) then a big batch of sterilisation when you have enough to fill the oven. I only bake mine at 110-120*C for 10-15 minutes.

 

[AUHEAMIC]

I normally rinse my bottles after use and turn them upside down to dry. Once dry I put them in a box and close the lid. I then sanitise them just before bottling. Well I got lazy during my last bottling effort. I just filled them strait out of the box without sanitising them. I havent tested all the bottles yet but out of the first 35 (or so) I havent had an infected one.

Im not sure if I am going to adopt this as a standard practice but it sure saves a lot of time.

 

[deebee]

We drink a lot of soda water so I have a steady supply of clean 1.25 litre PET bottles (Coles brand 75c each). I don't rinse or sanitise them, just never drink straight from the bottle and then seal them up when they are finished. I bottle at least half of every batch into PET bottles, sometimes that's all I use.

No sanitising and larger bottles cuts a lot of time.

(Of course, if I had kegs, I would have a free supply of soda water in the fridge and wouldn't need to buy it.)

 

[chimera]

Definitely rinse & stand after emptying, those bottle trees are a must.

The laundry trough is just big enough to hold 24 longnecks, the day of bottling i'll load up the trough with hot water & sod. percarbonate and leave them soaking while I go to work. Come home in the evening I shake, rinse and prime, haven't bothered sanitising for a good dozen batches now and its been smooth sailing.

I like the idea of the sterilizing in the oven, sounds good & simple and takes out the worst part of bottling.

 

[wambesi]

I normally rinse my bottles after use and turn them upside down to dry. Once dry I put them in a box and close the lid. I then sanitise them just before bottling. Well I got lazy during my last bottling effort. I just filled them strait out of the box without sanitising them. I havent tested all the bottles yet but out of the first 35 (or so) I havent had an infected one.

Im not sure if I am going to adopt this as a standard practice but it sure saves a lot of time.

Pretty much how I do it too, haven't had trouble yet. Although I do sanitise them before using I just found out that brewshield (which I use) breaks down after a short amount of time into water - and I was using stuff that was mixed and stored for weeks, so I guess in effect I wasn't sanitising them!
Oh well, alls well at the moment!

On the bottling topic, I don't actually find it that annoying, have been thinking of kegs but it would only be 1 or 2 that I got, I like the fact I have lots of variety to choose from...maybe I just haven't been bottling long enough

 

[chimera]

variety is the upside of bottling, I worry when my stocks drop below 5 'drinkers'...

 

[Yeasty]

variety is the upside of bottling, I worry when my stocks drop below 5 'drinkers'...

show me someone who has enough kegs to mature a batch of beer for 12 months



besides probably Ross of course...

 

[Doc]

show me someone who has enough kegs to mature a batch of beer for 12 months
besides probably Ross of course...

Me.

Doc

 

[SpillsMostOfIt]

If you're drinking your beers quickly, the 1.25litre PET bottles are fabulous! I started with them and still look back on the bottling effort fondly. I now usually bottle into glass or Coopers PET (because I have so many and I paid for them) so I can keep them a little longer (as if that is going to happen).

I've only just recently acquired a bottle tree and one of those squirty bottle rinser thingies. It's made life a lot easier, although PET bottles are still a pain - they have openings that are so large you need a washer or something over the spout of the rinser thingy.

I think sanitation is a numbers game and as I have never really been a gambler, I usually tend to overdo it a little. Sanitiser is cheap.