Bottled Up

Pictured at left: Beer, just before bottling, in blue sweatshirt, next to bucket.

Saturday was bottling day.

Ragtag collection of beer bottles was sanitized and dried. Tubes, caps, funnels, spigots, bottling wand, filter... all sanitized.

The first task was to get the beer out of the glass carboy, and into the bottling bucket. For this, I needed to cap the carboy with the racking (siphoning) tube and filter. I simply needed to start the siphon, simple except for the filter I was supposed to blow on to create pressure to get the beer up the racking tube, is not supposed to be soaked in water. I could not get air through the filter, and therefore I could not get pressure into the carboy. Beer no go.

I ended up having to blow directly into the hole for pressure, so again, I am concerned that the beer will be contaminated.

I was able to get the golden nectar into the bottling bucket (the one above in the white) and from there used a section of clear tubing to connect the spigot and the bottling wand, and brought out the bottles.

The bottling wand was kinda fun. It has a spring loaded stopper, and when pressed against the bottom of the bottle, allows liquid to flow freely. The liquid displacement is just enough to leave about an inch of headroom in the bottle when the wand bottle is filled to the top and then the wand pulled out.

I did this with the big bottles first, and then got about 21 12oz bottles filled. The smaller bottles were in a standard beer case with a divider, very handy for storage. But not so good for filling and capping. It was easy to let a few drips go over the side when filling, and when extracting the wand. Also, the bottles are difficult at best to cap when inside the box.

An upgrade for next time will be to place the bottles in a plastic storage container for bottling and then transfer to boxes after capping.

Two more weeks til testing time. Should be ready for the Superbowl!!