I just finished bottling my Alt Things Reconsidered. It took us about an hour to bottle (not including the time it took to prep everything). I ended up with 44 12 oz. bottles and 2 22 oz. bombers of beer. I can’t, at this time, say why I filled 2 bombers. I came to some conclusions.
- Bottling is a pain in the ass. I’ll definitely be looking into a kegging system at some point (probably after a year once I get the hang of things). I’ll keg the “normal” beers and bottle the experimental ones.
- Cleanup is even more a pain in the ass, but PBW is some serious stuff. Talk about easy removal of dried hard crusty crud.
- Capping Anchor bottles is easiest, followed by Sierra Nevada, followed by normal 12 oz., with the bombers being the toughest (at least according to Susan).
- I need a second hose for bottling. The 6 foot one I use for the siphon is too long for bottling. I should get one that’s like 3 feet.
- I need to get the bottling bucket up higher. Counter height with me sitting on the floor sucks.
- Writing a number 1 on the caps signifying your first batch is bottled is very satisfying and gives you a great sense of accomplishment.
Now I need to make some labels (I’m a dork, but I’ll label some of the bottles that I plan on giving out to people).
I don’t even use a hose for bottling, I just hook up one of these straight to the spigot on the bottling bucket:
http://www.williamsbrewing.com/SPRINGLESS_FILLER_P188C230.cfm
FWIW, I usually fill twelve 22 oz bottles and twenty-four 12 oz bottles. After cleaning up and prepping, my wife and I can bottle an entire batch in less than 20 minutes. I don’t know what kind of 22 oz bottles you used, but the ones you get from the homebrew store should be just as easy to cap as regular 12 oz bottles.
Get a little stool to site on instead of the floor – it makes all the difference in the world!
*sit on*
You don’t need a hose at all to hook that up to the spigot? It sounds like I might want something like that.
I just re-used 22 oz. bottles. I think I might start saving more of them and do it your way. It will probably be much easier and save my wife’s arms.
One other thing I need is a bottle tree to put the bottles on after they’re sanitized. I just took them out of the sanitizer and bottled them after letting them drip dry for a couple seconds.
Ya, the wife’s arms are a bit sore today. Apparently I need to work out more. ;0)
It should be fine just bottling right after removing them from the sanitizer. I don’t even use sanitizer with the bottles (the caps get sanitized, though) – I just put them in the dish washer on its hottest settings. I use a bottle brush to give a quick scrub to any bottles that have any sort of build up inside of them.
I cleaned the bottles with PBW a couple days before. My dishwasher does have a sanitize setting. I probably could’ve done that. I just figured using the actual sanitizing solution would be best (I use Iodophor). The PBW got rid of everything on them, including any residual glue. That’s some sick stuff.