...
Do it right and get a bench capper. Don't go for a lever capper as a halfway compromise, just go by a bench capper. They are worth their weight in gold
....
Nath
+1.
I don't drink large amounts of beer on a regular basis so don't
think I will go into a full blown kegging setup. Also don't have
the space for one nor can afford one while being a Uni student
for now.
Bottles are convenient, cleaning isn't that hard - my regime is
once a bottle is emptied, I rinse a couple of times until the
bottle is clean as a whistle and drain. Once dry I'll use a small
piece of glad wrap and rubberband to cover the bottle if it's not
going to be re-filled in the near future. With these bottles, when
I need to bottle beer I just remove the wrap and rinse with a
sanitiser (phos acid) and bottle.
If a bottle has strongly stuck on yeast/gunk, I'll give it a stronger
than usual sodium percarbonate soaking for a week or more and
that usually fixes it. With bottles bought from a bottle recycler,
they get the full on treatment once and they join they light
cleaning regime.
For each batch, I bottle into longnecks (tallies) and into two or so
PET bottle for monitoring the carbing levels for that batch (in case
they start to get really hard - danger! danger! Will Robinson!!!)
Having said all this, I got some 5L heineken keglets recently and
will use them for the quaffing beer while still retaining some of the
portability of bottles - hopefully these are a viable long term solution.
To me, the main drawback with glass is the potential bottle bomb
danger they present. To reduce this threat, I stick to using Coopers
longnecks (see
post).
T.
