Bottling..."For the first time"

[SBGuy212]

I want to first thank everyone that has given me advice and pointers to get through my first fermentation process. Went well and the beer is smelling really good. Now, I am getting ready to bottle this Sunday and wanted to get any helpful advice that you think I might need.

One question I have, is that I have been saving my dark, non-twist off bottles that my wife and I have consumed over the last 2 months and am very close to 50 bottles. Should I go ahead and clean these real good with Oxiclean and then sanitize or just go ahead and by new 50 bottles and wash those and sanitize? I've heard horror stories on beer getting infected through the bottling process or some getting carbonated and some not.. I know that deals with the priming sugar not getting mixed evening throughout the beer... Just alot of concerns that I might mess this up somehow...

Thank you again for everyone's help!

 

[Phil_Ozzy_Fer]

Congrats on making it this far! As far cleanliness goes, YES! Clean your bottles. Also, when bottling, be sure that you have properly sterilized your caps, and make you sure you allow yourself time. The first time I bottled a beer I made a spectacular mess and rushed the whole process. Needless to say, I wound up with a lot of questionable tasting beer. (Although enough ok tasting ones to give me hope.) If I think of anything else, I'll pass it on.

 

[myelo]

I'm philosophically opposed to buying beer bottles without beer in them.

I've not had any problems reusing bottles. Like with other aspects of brewing, as long as you clean and sanitize you should be good.

 

[flars]

Do the bottles have dried gunk in the bottom? If they do a soak in Oxy or PBW will loosen it. Then scrub with a bottle brush. Brush chucked in a battery powered drill saves a lot of work. After cleaning rinse well. A jet washer on the faucet does a good job.

If the bottles were rinsed well after pouring then a jet wash will suffice before sanitizing and filling. Starsan is a good no rinse sanitizer.

Sanitize everything that will touch the beer in the bottling process. This includes hands.

Begin the siphon to the bottling bucket. Siphon tube curled at the bottom. No splashing. Add your priming solution when half the beer is siphoned. Don't splash the priming solution. The swirl of the beer in the bucket will aid in mixing the solution throughout.

Bottling wand attached to the buckets spigot will make bottling and head space control automatic.

 

[unionrdr]

Yes. As long as you clean them well, rinse & sanitize before filling you can reuse them for years to come.

 

[fartinmartin]

Some of my bottles are from my original kit, that makes them over thirty five years old ! 1 pint, not 500ml , they have each seen easily into the hundreds of brews. Clean them and use them !

 

[Cheesy_Goodness]

Are the bottles delabeled? If not it's not a big deal, but most people prefer to have blank bottles to use for homebrew.

If you want to delabel them, you're right about the oxy clean. Then rinse and sanitize.

Infections can definitely happen at this point, but you're probably better off than you think. The best advice I can give is to set everything up ahead of time, and plan for about 2 hours to bottle your first batch (probably more time than you need).
Eventually you'll find a good process that works for you and you'll have a batch bottled in under an hour, but the first few are usually the most irritating.
Good luck!

 

[solbes]

Absolutely no need to buy empty bottles. Have fun drinking commercially available beer. It's beer research afterall, and should be considered an R&D expense toward making good beer.

I guess all of my bottles get an oxiclean soak at one point or another to remove the labels. After that I just rinse them REALLY well and dry them. They all get a Starsan shower using a Sulphiter about 10 minutes before they are filled with beer. If you are going to continue bottling, I would highly recommend one for $15-20.

 

[GHBWNY]

You might want to have a few more than 50 bottles cleaned, sanitized and ready to use. I've had a 5 gal. batch (presuming that's what you're bottling) run as high as 56 bottles. Better a few too many than to come up short with beer left in your bottling bucket and no bottles to put it in. Also, if you are using "oxy" caps, you might want to steriize and sanitize only as many as you think you will need as soaking them in liquid activates the anti-oxigen feature in the cap.

Congrats and welcome!!!

 

[chichum]

One thing I do is I clean and delabel the bottles in advance. When it's time to bottle, I'll run them all through the dishwasher with PBW instead of detergent. Run the dishwasher at the hi-temp wash and heated dry. This will do a really nice job. Then you can bottle them with them sitting on the dishwasher door (6-8 at a time) which will catch any drips when switching between bottles.

Good luck!

 

[unionrdr]

Don't soak the o2 barrier caps. Just dunk them in Starsan before placing on the bottle.You want it sanitized, not sterilized. Sterilizing takes more than Starsan. They'd ruin the o2 barrier part of the cap by soaking too long. So I just dunk'em, place on bottle. Then when I get 12-13 bottles I run them all through the bench capper. Then turn bottle upside down one to wet the inside of the cap before going into covered boxes. But 56 or 57 bottles is a good idea. I've gotten 57 bottles out of a 5 gallon batch before. But on average I get 53-54 12oz bottles.

 

[SBGuy212]

Alright so after using Oxi to delabel and getting initial clean, I won't need to use Oxi again to clean when I use the same bottles if I rinse them good? Or am I hearing wrong on that?

 

[Cheesy_Goodness]

That's right.
You probably know already, but you'll still need to sanitize before bottling your next batch. Oxyclean is just meant to break down the stuff that's harder to clean, but does almost nothing in the way of sanitizing.

 

[eadavis80]

A few extra tips: put a towel on the floor under your bottling wand. You'll have some drips. Also, an old plastic gift card or library card works well to scrape beer label glue off your soaked bottles. Some glue by brewers can be stubborn. I am very lucky to get 50 bottles out of a 5-gallon batch. Lastly, bottling with a friend can be fun and will make it a lot faster!

 

[SBGuy212]

A few extra tips: put a towel on the floor under your bottling wand. You'll have some drips. Also, an old plastic gift card or library card works well to scrape beer label glue off your soaked bottles. Some glue by brewers can be stubborn. I am very lucky to get 50 bottles out of a 5-gallon batch. Lastly, bottling with a friend can be fun and will make it a lot faster!

So you're saying "Team work makes the dream work?"

 

[SBGuy212]

Should I take a hydrometer reading before I start bottling?

 

[flars]

Should I take a hydrometer reading before I start bottling?

Yes, stable hydrometer readings are the only way to know if fermentation is complete. Two SG readings three days apart, that are the same, indicates fermentation is complete. Bottling before fermentation is complete can result in extremely high carbonation pressures. This means potential bottle bombs.

 

[SBGuy212]

Yes, stable hydrometer readings are the only way to know if fermentation is complete. Two SG readings three days apart, that are the same, indicates fermentation is complete. Bottling before fermentation is complete can result in extremely high carbonation pressures. This means potential bottle bombs.

Oh ok. What's the best way to get a sample from a glass carboy? By doing this will it risk my brew getting infected?

 

[rhythmsteve]

Put them all In a dishwasher and run that full and the dry cycle will sterilize it

 

[flars]

The best way to get the sample from a carboy is with a wine/beer thief. A turkey baster works well also. Remember to sanitize and don't put the sample back in the beer. Samples are for tasting after the SG readings.

Sanitize the carboy bung and carboy mouth before you pull it. Set the bung in sanitizer to keep it clean while taking the sample.

 

[SBGuy212]

The best way to get the sample from a carboy is with a wine/beer thief. A turkey baster works well also. Remember to sanitize and don't put the sample back in the beer. Samples are for tasting after the SG readings.

Sanitize the carboy bung and carboy mouth before you pull it. Set the bung in sanitizer to keep it clean while taking the sample.

What's a bung?

 

[SBGuy212]

What's a bung?

Never mind, just looked it up on google. The airlock Rubbermaid cork thing, got it.

 

[GHBWNY]

Also, an old plastic gift card or library card works well to scrape beer label glue off your soaked bottles. Some glue by brewers can be stubborn.

> Southern Tier Brewing Co., Western NY. GREAT beer, tough glue. It's literally impossible to soak off! Labels fall off the glue, but glue stays on the bottle. Had to use a Scotch Brite pad.

 

[fantasticapparatus]

+1 on the dishwasher. Many dishwashers have a "sanitize" button or automatically do it (like my bosch). So starsan is not needed. Put your bottling bucket over the dishwasher and bottle with the door open to catch any mess. I used to wait until the bottles cooled, but have been filling them hot recently and it seems like it jumpstarts the carbing process. I have bottled 155 gallons without incident this way.

 

[FuzzeWuzze]

Yup bottle on your dishwasher, you WILL spill beer all over when bottling no matter how careful you are things leak or you overfill slightly because its a boring process.

I always wash them in the machine with no soap added, then spray a bit of starsan in it shake it and fill it.

When your done just close the dishwasher door and all your mess goes down the drain istead of creating a sticky mess on your floor. Because that's how you get ants.

 

[SBGuy212]

+1 on the dishwasher. Many dishwashers have a "sanitize" button or automatically do it (like my bosch). So starsan is not needed. Put your bottling bucket over the dishwasher and bottle with the door open to catch any mess. I used to wait until the bottles cooled, but have been filling them hot recently and it seems like it jumpstarts the carbing process. I have bottled 155 gallons without incident this way.

So when I use the Sanitize setting on my dishwasher, I won't need to put any sanitizer in? The dishwaher has it's own sanitizer? Or just uses really hot water.

And I put the bottles upside down, correcto?

 

[fantasticapparatus]

Yes bottles upside down on the "spikes" that hold the dishes. I do not use any other sanitizer. The sanitize function keeps it above 160 for long enough.
I can fit 24 22oz bottles and I put another 8 12oz bottles in the silver ware basket. I put the wand on the top shelf.

 

[fantasticapparatus]

This has worked fine with no soap at all in the dishwasher for bottles that had been timely rinsed and stored. I've added 2 scoops of PBW when there was junk in a few bottles and made sure to put them in a place they would be sprayed more (not the corners).
Theoretically, if you have clean rinsed bottles, you can just shovel bottles into the dishwasher on both shelves in any direction and the heat will sanitize them, you'd have to dump some water out of a few but it still should be fine. Enough for a 5 gallon batch fit on the bottom rack in the upside down position so I always do that.

 

[frankjones]

I had a lady give me some of her ex husband brew stuff. She was going to throw it away. 2 five gal carboys and 150 old crusty moldy bottles. I soaked the bottles in oxy clean over night. 12 at a time in my kitchen sink. The bottles cleaned up perfectly. Later I learned the bottles were from 1998 ish. Lol. Same for carboy. They all cleaned up nice from the oxy clean and I have used the bottles three times so far. No issues. None. For $5 worth of oxy clean I salvaged around $100 with of materials. If I need bottles or yeast I buy Sam Adams white lantern because they bottle condition with yeast that would cost me eight dollars and the bottles are sturdy as hell with pry of tops. I'm honing in on lowering my expenses as well as making better beer. I have the cost of my white lantern witbier clone down to $00.33 cents per beer. Including bottles and yeast. ( not including electric for boil). My bottles and yeast are almost pennies.

My next project will be to harvest chimay yeast and make a Trappist.

 

[SBGuy212]

Cool, so I won't need to buy any star San. I do have some B-brite left over from my starter kit that I can use to sanitize the bottling bucket and whatever doesn't go in the dishwasher.

I have another quick question that's been worrying me. I started this batch, will be 2 weeks this Saturday (August 16th). The directions say to keep it in the fermenter for 2 weeks; however, I might not be able to bottle it until Monday due to a hectic schedule. Will it hurt to leave the beer in the carboy an extra 2 days? I'm doing a Amber Ale and used a standard dry yeast. Thank you for everyone's help with everything.

 

[phug]

the extra 2 days won't hurt anything

 

[unionrdr]

Yeah, you'll likely just wind up with clearer beer. Oh darn!

 

[Keith_O]

Won't hurt a thing!



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[SBGuy212]

How do you get higher ABV?

 

[unionrdr]

By adding more fermentables. At some point though, you'll also have to add more yeast as well.

 

[BlueHouseBrewhaus]

If you have time next weekend, you might even want to leave it in the fermenter for another week (you'll have time to create some more empty bottles). Additional time lets the yeasties do some cleanup. I never bottle earlier than 3 weeks and sometimes as long as 6. There are folks on here that go even longer. It definitely won't hurt and almost always helps. You don't have to worry about bad effects until you start measuring your fermentation time in months.

 

[SBGuy212]

By adding more fermentables. At some point though, you'll also have to add more yeast as well.

And you can do this at any point, even if the beer as been settling in the fermenter for about a week? And what would be a good fermentable to add to my brew? And after adding more fermentables and yeast, it's ok to stir it in? Just worried about involving too much oxygen to my brew.

 

[SBGuy212]

If you have time next weekend, you might even want to leave it in the fermenter for another week (you'll have time to create some more empty bottles). Additional time lets the yeasties do some cleanup. I never bottle earlier than 3 weeks and sometimes as long as 6. There are folks on here that go even longer. It definitely won't hurt and almost always helps. You don't have to worry about bad effects until you start measuring your fermentation time in months.

Oh ok. Thank you! Yeah it's been in for 2 weeks now. Fermenting for 1 week and settling for the past week. Thinking about trying to making some attempts to increase my ABV?

 

[unionrdr]

And you can do this at any point, even if the beer as been settling in the fermenter for about a week? And what would be a good fermentable to add to my brew? And after adding more fermentables and yeast, it's ok to stir it in? Just worried about involving too much oxygen to my brew.

I prefer to do it in the boil. I've never added more malts & yeast after fermentation begins. But I suppose you could. But you would be increasing volume as well, so ABV won't go up that much seems to me.

 

[frankjones]

I use oxy clean to clean and bleach with water mixture that is a common and cost effective sanitation procedure that is used the world round. I have never had an infected batch. It's cheap. Easy. Convenient. People will say that you can get off flavor ... Just rinse well. I spray the solution generously inside and out let sit five mins and rinse well with in a five gallon bucket of clean rinse water from the tap. I can clean and sanitize 150 bottles easily for 50 cents

Other commercial products are amazing but they are costly. A gallon of clorox bleach for $4. Far more cost effective for hundreds of batches if not thousands. I did not do the math lol. But fat more economical