Bottling Beer - I need pointers. ASAP!

[ZachY2072]

Hi! Been a while since I posted, brewing has been going good.
My current predicament is that I have a 5 gallon batch of a brown ale ready to bottle and I'm very under prepared.
I have plenty of bottles and about 50 soaking in an oxiclean free solution to clean em good and remove labels.
My question is this: is there anything I can do or rig up to quickly sanitize all of these bottles and speed up the process? I have a table mounted capper and bottling bucket - but the sanitation and filling seems to take forever when I'm flying solo.
Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.
Thanks,
-Zach

P.S. I know KEGGING, but I can't exactly afford it currently. Holidays have drained me!

 

[unionrdr]

Well,what sanitizer do you have? Starsan is no rinse,so you could get another clean bucket around the house & mix up some Starsan in that do dunk them in right before filling.

 

[ZachY2072]

I have some off brand I literally got at our local country general store. It is something "Brite" I think. I just worry with them being in oxiclean so long and just a solid dunk not being sufficient. Still, that is a better method than what I have been doing, thanks! (I won't admit the technique I used prior haha)

 

[unionrdr]

If it's B-Brite,it's a cleaner,not a sanitizer. http://www.midwestsupplies.com/b-brite.html
You need a sanitizer like Starsan or Idophor.

 

[cjgenever]

Rinse them with hot tap water and then sanitize with starsan or idophor. No rinse sanitizers are worth the money.

 

[kev]

Remember to rinse your bottles well before sanitizing. Last thing you want is left over soap in your beer. Iodophor or star San won't rinse out the soap. Good luck
Cheers
Kev

 

[duboman]

If you don't have a sanitizer handy and can't wait to bottle until you get some you can thoroughly rinse the bottles to get rid of the oxy and place the bottles in the oven at around 160-180 degrees for an hour or so to sanitize them. It's not the most ideal situation but if you are impatient it will do a decent job.
for the future get Star San, a bottle tree and a Vinator and it will make your bottling day a breeze!

 

[Trox]

If you don't have a proper sanatizer (such as StarSan or Idophor) you could wait until your done washing all of the bottles and make sure they are completely dry inside. After they are dry cover the ends of each one with some aluminum foil and then stack them on thier sides in your oven. After you have them all in the oven, turn it on and let it heat up to 250F, and then let it sit there for about 30 minutes. After the 30 minutes turn it off and let everything cool down. Then once all of the bottles are at room temp, take the aluminum foil off of each bottle as you fill it, then put the aluminum foil back on. Before you start bottling you can put your caps in a pot of water and bring it to a boil, let boil 10 minutes, turn off heat, put lid on pot, and then let it cool down while you bottle; I don't think this will hurt your caps hopefully someone with more experience will speak up on it if it does. Once you have all your bottles filled quickly place a sanitized cap on each one and then use the capper on all of them.

Of course if you go this method you'll probably be bottling tomorrow.

 

[unionrdr]

I don't like the idea of boiling the caps. It could loosen the adhesive on the plastic liner & ruin them.

 

[cjgenever]

Old school was to boil a bunch of water with foil over the top to keep it clean while it cools. That is the rinse water. Sanitize with bleach solution and rinse the bleach off the bottles and caps with the cooled rinse water.

Complete PITA and less sanitary than starsan, but it works.

 

[sfgoat]

You need a vinator. Look it up on eBay. Makes so it's just a quick pump to sanitize and you are ready to go. I use iodophor to sanitize at 12.5 ppm so I don't worry about rinsing or drying afterward. As far as the actual bottling goes it's just a pain to do it on your own. I usually wait until a friend or swmbo can cap while I fill. For a few beers I'm sure someone would be happy to help you.

 

[unionrdr]

Between my super agata bench capper,& vinator & bottle tree,bottling by myself isn't quite so bad anymore. Now if I had a dedicated bottling table,it'd go even quicker. It's all in how you set it up as to what a chore or joy it is.

 

[matt2778]

Between my super agata bench capper,& vinator & bottle tree,bottling by myself isn't quite so bad anymore. Now if I had a dedicated bottling table,it'd go even quicker. It's all in how you set it up as to what a chore or joy it is.

I have to agree with set up points. I might add that attaching the bottling wand directly to the bottling bucket spigot allows you to fill bottles one handed. Another trick is mixing up priming solution in pint jars and pressure canning 15 batches worth at a time. I find that I'm able to bottle a batch in hour from setup to clean up with the actual filling and capping taking only 20 minutes. If your spending more than an hour and a half bottling you probably should reevaluate your process.

Here's a good read https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/bottling-tips-homebrewer-94812/

 

[cjbalough]

I've only done 4 batches, so I'm far from an expert, but there is a bottling stickie here that has some good ideas. First batch I did, I used the dishwasher - hot wash/sank rinse cycle and it worked fine. Since then I've done the bottle dunk in a bucket of sanitizer - then line them up in my kitchen sink. Then I filll and cap a dozen or so at a time and dump the residual liquid before filling them. I put my bottling bucket up on my overturned boiling pot, short hose off the spigot to my wand. Then hang the wand so it is over the edge of the counter, and I place a bucket or pan to catch the drips. No problems doing it solo.

 

[unionrdr]

My biggest problem is set up. I have to use an end table in the room for the capper & filled bottles & caps. A chair seat with the back broken off to put the bottle tree/vinator on. That sort of thing. I have to drag everything into position to bottle. Then clean up & put everything back where it belongs. Hence my need for a dedicated bottling table. It'd speed things up a lot at my age.

 

[FuzzeWuzze]

Between my super agata bench capper,& vinator & bottle tree,bottling by myself isn't quite so bad anymore. Now if I had a dedicated bottling table,it'd go even quicker. It's all in how you set it up as to what a chore or joy it is.

If you have a dishwasher you have the best dedicated bottling table that exists.

 

[jakeasaur]

If you have a dishwasher you have the best dedicated bottling table that exists.

^

 

[brick]

Here's my process, which gets me through a 5 gallon bottling session in under 2 hours:

Before bottling day:
Clean bottles in advance with an oxyclean soak (a few days usually) followed by a good rinse. Once dry, I put bottles upside-down in their cases to prevent anything new from getting in.

On bottling day:
1) Fill my bottling bucket up with 5gal of starsan solution
2) Begin soaking bottles in batches of 10-12 for a few minutes per batch. Hang sanitized bottles on a sanitized bottle tree (just sprayed with starsan) to drain.
3) While waiting for one batch to soak, get the priming sugar boiling.
4) While waiting for another batch to soak, count out my crowns and get them soaking in a bowl of starsan.
5) When all of the bottles have been sanitized, I re-wet the exposed inside surface of the bottling bucket with starsan and then drain it into my tool tub, which contains my bottling wand, autosiphon and a large spoon. I drain from the spigot using my bottling hose, which ensures plenty of contact time to sanitize both.
6) Once drained, I give the tools a few extra minutes to soak and then start racking my beer on top of the priming solution.
7) When that's done I use my sanitized spoon to gently stir the beer and ensure that the priming sugar has been evenly distributed. I had issues with uneven priming before I started doing this.
8) I put a chair on top of my kitchen island (which my wife hates) and put the bottling bucket on top of that to place it at a comfortable working height.
9) Re-sanitize the external part of the spigot with a few sprays of starsan.
10) Connect the bottling wand and tubing, fill bottles in the usual way.
11) Apply and crimp sanitized crowns
12) Clean up and go do something more fun.

Pre-cleaning the bottles saves a solid hour and takes a lot of the drudgery out of the process. Extended soaking in oxyclean solution almost eliminates the need to scrub, which makes cleaning relatively easy. I only spend 10 or 15 minutes on either end. As a result, I have the patience when I bottle to allow proper sanitizer contact times and generally not rush the process.

 

[tnsen]

try the "Jet Carboy and Bottle rinser " this will save time rinsing worth its weight in gold well worth the 12 bucks

 

[cjgenever]

try the "Jet Carboy and Bottle rinser " this will save time rinsing worth its weight in gold well worth the 12 bucks

Mine is great. Came with a quick release do it is a breeze to connect it and rinse my bottles as they are used. It also allows a convenient connection for my IC.