Bottling day tips

Lots of good advice in this thread. Let me add a couple thoughts:

1) You can make things a bit easier on yourself by doing some things beforehand, such as sanitizing your bottles. Clean 'em and soak 'em in sanitizer the day before and set them on a bottle tree to dry. (If you don't have a bottle tree, they're well worth the small investment.) It's OK to leave them over night.

2) Work with a partner. Get your wife, a buddy, whoever. It's easier and more sanitary if one person fills bottles while the other caps.

3) Accurately measure the quantity of the beer being carbonated and the amount of sugar needed for proper carbonation for that style. (There are calculators available online.) It's a common mistake for newcomers to assume a given volume of sugar will work for all styles. It will "work" in the sense that you will get some carbonation, but you may wind up with more or less than you want if you don't measure correctly both of these quantities.

4) Gently stir priming fluid into the beer before proceeding further. Don't splash it in (because you want to avoid oxidizing the beer) but you do want to gently stir in order to make sure it's evenly distributed.

5) Regulate the rate of discharge from the bottling bucket by positioning it higher or lower from the bottles being filled. The closer the bottle is to the level of the bottling bucket, the slower the flow will be. You want to get a steady, but slow flow.

7) Put a tray or a towel or something under the bottles as they're being filled. You'll probably spill some.

6) Have fun. Celebrate. You brewed your first batch!

 

Oh, I also recommend laying something down for the knees, like a folded towel or t-shirt. Maybe I am doing it wrong but bottling wreaks havoc on my knees...

 

put the sugar for bottle conditioning INTO the beer BEFORE you bottle and cap the beer.

I hope you've been picky about bottles. I reject any that have ANY visible residue of any kind. All bottles must be immediately rinsed with HOT water, then allowed to dry upside-down till completely dry, then covered with a square of foil to be accepted. Otherwise, if in doubt, reject. You'll know when you haven't been picky enough about bottles when you get a few individually infected beers in an otherwise ok batch. You'll see the ring of bacteria around where the water line was in the bottle. You'll taste it. They might blow up. Be picky about bottles.

A bottling tree is an extremely handy device.

 

Am I the only one who bottles wet? I don't have a bottling tree or equivalent. So once I dump the sanitizer, I shake them dry the best I can then bottle. They are still a bit wet. I just don't see the point in drying them well, we are about to put liquid in them, afterall.

 

I use a chair, my knees see no abuse.

 

Before I kegged, I bottled wet all the time. I did the same thing as @Mothergoose03 -- rinsed bottles, placed upside-down in cardboard boxes, and let them drain as long as it took me to start filling them up. I only ever had one batch in thirteen go south on me, and that was due to other circumstances.

No love for zero-index listers!

 

+1. I am extremely picky about my bottles. I'm lucky that I have a steady stream of bottles coming in from friends. The first thing I do is smell the bottle. If I get a strong smell of beer, it either wasn't rinsed well or not at all. If it smells clean then I hold them up to the light and look up inside them. If I see or smell ANYTHING suspicious, I toss them. Bottles are relatively cheap. A case for about $12. It's not worth ruining all that hard work up to the bottling point to cheap out on a sketchy bottle.

 

Yup, I bottle in a spare bathtub, so I go with a folded fluffy towel for the knees. Bottling in a tub also makes for easy cleanup! The bottles always need a rinse off after they're capped anyway. I don't want no sticky bottles dirty'n up my fridge.

 

Me too.

 

Note the specification for a FLUFFY towel, not just a regular one. You've gotta take note of the smallest details when it comes to brewing.

 

Welcome to what can be a fun, and sometimes expensive, hobby! I've bottled all of my batches and like the ability to give beer to friends so I have no intentions on changing to kegs. Some pointers that help me...
1. Instead of using a racking cane with the bottling wand attatchment I picked up a bottling bucket with a spigot. Made transfering to bottles a breeze.
2. I picked up a clean used bottle tree and love it. I clean my bottles the night before, store them upside down in their holders, and sanitize the day I bottle and store the bottles on the tree while I transfer the beer over and get my priming sugar mixed in.
3. Use the door of you dishwasher to catch any beer that dribbles out of the bottling wand between bottle fills.
4. Make sure you have everything you need (caps, priming sugar, starsan, etc.) before you start!

 

Another thing to mention.... don't forget to take your Final Gravity reading before bottling. I take it before adding the priming sugar syrup, but I don't think this sugar would add too many points to the reading if you forget and do it after the sugar addition. But that can depend if you added very much water with it to get up to your 5-gallon level. If you add an appreciable amount of water then you definitely need to stir it in or you'll get an inaccurate reading.

You'll want this number to be accurate for your ABV calculations and for notation on the recipe for future reference.

 

I'm sure this works fine.

Drying the bottles gets rid of that little bit of sanitizer you might not want in your beer, but the amount is so small it's not going to be perceivable in the beer anyway so it's not really necessary to do this (assuming you're using non-rinse sanitizer).

Bottling trees are convenient, in that you can sanitize the bottles, leave 'em sit for a while if necessary, and then have them all available at arm's reach while you're bottling. You get your bottles drained in a way that's easy and doesn't make a mess. To me, that makes them worth it, but I can see how you could do without them.